The judgments of human beings can be biased; they can also be noisy. Across a wide range of settings, use of algorithms is likely to improve accuracy, because algorithms will reduce both bias and noise. Indeed, algorithms can help identify the role of human biases; they might even identify biases...

In The Rhetoric of Reaction, published in 1991, Albert Hirschman identified three standard objections to reform proposals: perversity, futility, and jeopardy. In Hirschman’s account, these objections define reactionary rhetoric. As Hirschman had it, a proposal would be “perverse” if it...

Humans are engineered neurologically to make rational and irrational choices. This paper introduces a new paradigm for decision making – a composite choice model – in which economic agents are constantly weighing rationality versus irrationality when encountering options. In an exploratory,...

We challenge the standard definition of economic rationality as consistency by making use of a novel distinction between axioms of decision theory: consistency and preference axioms. We argue that this distinction has been overlooked by the literature and, as a result, evidence that consistency...

We challenge the standard definition of economic rationality as consistency by making use of a novel distinction between axioms of decision theory: consistency and preference axioms. We argue that this distinction has been overlooked by the literature and, as a result, evidence that consistency...

A growing literature shows how insights from behavioral economics can be successfully adopted in simple interventions through SMS or other types of low-cost communications. In this short, note we provide concrete basic guidelines to design behaviorally informed messages, based on theory and our...

Chronically, most of developing countries as exampled in Sudan suffer from the low levels of income in addition to the low savings that are result from the lack of savings channels. Hence, the investment depends on the individuals' abilities on savings, where the investment is considered as...

The present paper examines impacts of foreign exchange rates against the Sudanese currency on savings. The increasing rates of foreign currencies in the domestic Sudanese Black markets have simultaneously resulted in the continuous depreciated Sudanese currency values over the past year...

There is an apparent rift between the way banks calculate and the way humans think.On the one hand, exponential discounting has played a centuries-long, lead role in financial analysis. On the other hand, experiments by behavioral economists demonstrate that hyperbolic discounting is better than...

A growing literature shows how insights from behavioral economics can be successfully adopted in simple interventions through SMS or other types of low-cost communications. In this short, note we provide concrete basic guidelines to design behaviorally informed messages, based on theory and our...