Sublime

Some economists are already working on that. They are using this brain-imaging data to support a new political philosophy known as asymmetric paternalism. That's a fancy name for a simple idea: creating policies and incentives that help people triumph over their irrational impulses and make better, more prudent decisions. Shlomo Benartzi and Richar

At the same time, politicians were growing increasingly softer on crime—“for fear of sounding racist,” as the economist Gary Becker has written, “since African-Americans and Hispanics commit a disproportionate share of felonies.”

The data show that a man who solicits a street prostitute is likely to be arrested about once for every 1,200 visits.

The bottom line is that small changes in the communication structure can affect decisions.

One groundbreaking experiment was conducted by Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

The New York City schools have recently begun experimenting with a program that pays students for improving their standardized test scores; initial results have been extremely encouraging. By focusing on immediate rewards, these incentive programs help correct for the immature prefrontal cortices of children and teenagers.

In the depths of the recession in March 2009, 3.9 million people were hired and 4.7 million were fired. That gives us a loss of 800,000 jobs in one month, but notice that 3.9 million people were hired! So the economy produces jobs. The issue is at what price does labor clear. In a globalized economy, wages are falling for the unskilled as they comp

“They have hired astronomers; they have hired mathematicians; they have hired physicists; they have even hired theologists. They never even interviewed an economist.”

It turns out that a crack boss didn’t have as much control over his subordinates as he would have liked. That’s because they had different incentives.