Why people do the things they do: and how information affects their choices

摘要

'I can't believe I just did that!' is a fashionable way of saying that we have just done something that we can't instantly rationalize. A commitment to understand what may at first seem irrational decisions and self-destructive conduct is the starting point of Banerjee and Duflo's Poor Economics: Barefoot Hedge-fund Managers, DIY Doctors and the Surprising Truth about Life on Less than $1 a Day (Public Affairs 2011). Their perception is that development projects have failed in their thousands because their personnel have quite simply not understood the motivations that drive the decisions of the poor.