This long week has zapped my creative thinking.

It’s been a _long_ while since I’ve posted.  Slowly, but surely, the writing bug has gotten to me.

An opinion article on the NYT has circled around the econ blogosphere: Economics Behaving Badly. It’s an interesting article that sort of legitimizes behavioral economics while putting it in its place.   The following quote summarizes it pretty well:

Behavioral economics should complement, not substitute for, more substantive economic interventions. If traditional economics suggests that we should have a larger price difference between sugar-free and sugared drinks, behavioral economics could suggest whether consumers would respond better to a subsidy on unsweetened drinks or a tax on sugary drinks.

But that’s the most it can do. For all of its insights, behavioral economics alone is not a viable alternative to the kinds of far-reaching policies we need to tackle our nation’s challenges.

A lot of popular reading in economics is a stem off of behavioral economics, e.g. Freakonomics, More Sex is Safer Sex, Naked Economics (hmm, interesting set of titles there).  I’ve started to loath this sort of reading as it’s merely showing study after study of correlations yet asserting causation.

One thing a behavioral economist might say, going along with the aforementioned example in the quote, is in order to encourage consumers to stop smoking, increase the taxes on smoking (or perhaps, subsidy cessation tools).  But I have to ask, it is an expensive habit but does the expense really encourage people to stop smoking?  I ask this honestly because I’m not sure if money would be the first reason rather than health.

Man, I’m way too zonked to go any further.