About Me
Posted on 02/18/2010 @ 11:35 AM
When I took my first economics class as a freshman in college, I learned that people make rational, profit-maximizing decisions with full information. I was surprised by this, since nobody I knew made decisions that way-- especially as a college freshman, my friends and I made irrational and deeply "sub-optimal" decisions literally every day. On multiple occasions I watched some of the young men from my dorm take pies (not a piece of pie but entire blueberry pie, pie tin and all) off the cafeteria dessert shelf and sit down to eat the entire pie. (Many threw up a few hours later.) What could explain their behavior? I could come up with a handful of reasons--peer pressure, competitiveness, gluttony, the unique stupidity of being 18 years old and far from home for the first time, but none of these explanations fit into the models we were learning in class.
1200 G Street, NW
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