Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much Hardcover
Author: Visit Amazon's Sendhil Mullainathan Page - ISBN: 0805092641 - Language: English - Format: PDF, EPUB
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From Publishers Weekly
Review
"Extraordinarily illuminating. . . . Mullainathan and Shafir have made an important, novel, and immensely creative contribution."—Cass R. Sunstein, The New York Review of Books
"Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir offer groundbreaking insights into, among other themes, the effects of poverty on cognition and our ability to make choices about our lives."—Samantha Power, The Wall Street Journal
"Scarcity is a captivating book, overflowing with new ideas, fantastic stories, and simple suggestions that just might change the way you live."—Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics
"Compelling, important … Scarcity is likely to change how you view both entrenched poverty and your own ability — or inability —to get as much done as you’d like… It’s a handy guide for those of us looking to better understand our inability to ever climb out of the holes we dig ourselves, whether related to money, relationships, or time."—The Boston Globe
"Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir are stars in their respective disciplines, and the combination is greater than the sum of its parts. Together they manage to merge scientific rigor and a wry view of the human predicament. Their project has a unique feel to it: it is the finest combination of heart and head that I have seen in our field."—Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
"The scarcity phenomenon is good news because to a certain extent, we can design our way around it...What’s particularly useful about the idea of scarcity is that it is overarching; ease that burden, and people will be better able to deal with all the rest."—The New York Times
"Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir show how the logic of scarcity applies to rich and poor, educated and illiterate, Asian, Western, Hispanic, and African cultures alike. They offer insights that can help us change our individual behavior and that open up an entire new landscape of public policy solutions. A breathtaking achievement!"—Anne-Marie Slaughter, professor emerita, Princeton University, and president and CEO of the New America Foundation
"A key point of Mullainathan and Shafir's work is that we may all experience different kinds of scarcity, accompanied by the same hyper-narrow focus and costs in lost attention elsewhere."—The Atlantic
"Here is a winning recipe. Take a behavioral economist and a cognitive psychologist, each a prominent leader in his field, and let their creative minds commingle. What you get is a highly original and easily readable book that is full of intriguing insights. What does a single mom trying to make partner at a major law firm have in common with a peasant who spends half her income on interest payments? The answer is scarcity. Read this book to learn the surprising ways in which scarcity affects us all."—Richard H. Thaler, University of Chicago, coauthor of Nudge
"[Mullainathan and Shafir] examine how having too little of something first inspires focused bursts of creativity and productivity--consider how looming deadlines can motivate us. But a long-term dearth can result in fixations that hinder our decision-making...Less is not necessarily more."--Discover Magazine
"With a smooth blend of stories and studies, Scarcity reveals how the feeling of having less than we need can narrow our vision and distort our judgment. This is a book with huge implications for both personal development and public policy."—Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human
"Scarcity is certain to gain popularity and generate discussion because it hits home. Everyone has experienced scarcity, and the research cited will likely alter every reader’s worldview."—American Scientist’s "Scientists’ Bookshelf"
"Insightful, eloquent, and utterly original, Scarcity is the book you can’t get enough of. It is essential reading for those who don’t have the time for essential reading."—Daniel Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Stumbling on Happiness
"The book’s unified theory of the scarcity mentality is novel in its scope and ambition."—The Economist
"A pacey dissection of a potentially life-changing subject."—Time Out London
"A succinct, digestible and often delightfully witty introduction to an important new branch of economics."—New Statesman
"One of the most significant economics books of the year."—Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution
"The struggle for insufficient resources—time, money, food, companionship—concentrates the mind for better and, mostly, worse, according to this revelatory treatise on the psychology of scarcity . . . The authors support their lucid, accessible argument with a raft of intriguing research . . . and apply it to surprising nudges that remedy everything from hospital overcrowding to financial ignorance . . . Insightful."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
DETAILS
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Times Books (September 3, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0805092641
- ISBN-13: 978-0805092646
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Applied Psychology
- #16 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Applied Psychology
- #21 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Social Psychology & Interactions
REVIEWS
Scarcity Why Having Too Little Means So Much Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir Times Books 3 Reviews Scarcity Why Having Too Little Means So Much and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle Learn more 14 Reviews Scarcity Why having too little means so much Amazon co uk Sendhil Mullainathan Eldar Shafir BooksHarvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan has written a book called Scarcity Why Having Too Little Means So Much Why having too little means so much Hardcover Scarcity Why having too little means so much Audible Download Audio Books Scarcity Why having too little means so much by Sendhil Mullainathan Eldar Sharif Buy the book Tell us what you think Star rate and review this book Why Having Too Little Means So Much book by Sendhil Mullainathan Hardcover at Chapters Indigo ca Scarcity Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Eldar The book Scarcity Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullianathan and Eldar Shafir examines decisions made whilst suffering from diminishing resources Scarcity Why Having Too Little Means So Much The dynamics of scarcity reveal why dieters find it hard to resist temptation HARDCOVER Language Scarcity Why Having Too Little Means So Much Audiobook By Sendhil Mullainatham and Eldar Shafir read by Robert Petkoff Unabridged edition 2013 8 hours and 47
I once heard Sendhil Mullainathan speak at an event in DC, and he was smart and engaging. He's a MacArthur Foundation genius, a Harvard economist, and a TED speaker. He has a wry sense of humor and tells anecdotes from his personal life to make his economics work come alive. And all of that is in this book, written with his long-time collaborator, Eldar Shafir, who's a Princeton psychologist.
Still this book was a bit of a disappointment, possibly because I expected so much. A lot of the conclusions are, well, obvious. The book's entire thesis can be summarized as: "People make bad decisions when they are resource-constrained, whether the resources in question are money, time, food, or something else." Some of it recaps what has been said before about hyperbolic discounting in economics.
The book's chapters go like this...
Intro - definition of "scarcity" and overview of its consequences
Chap. 1 - The good: scarcity can cause focus. The bad: focus can mean inattention to other things.
Chap. 2 - Scarcity causes an internal disruption that makes it harder to make good decisions.
Chap. 3 - Slack (the opposite of scarcity) allows better choices and reduces the bad consequences of failiure.
Chap. 4 - Poor people are sometimes more realistic about estimating costs, because they have to be.
Chap. 5 - Borrowing when you're short of cash leads to a descending spiral of debt.
Chap. 6 & 7 - Poverty is a vicious circle of scarcity leading to bad decisions leading to scarcity...
Chap. 8 - Poverty can be alleviated by creating slack, such as extra cash or day care to create more time.
Chap. 9 - Efficient use of resources and division of labor helps organizations become more efficient.
Chap.
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