Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (34 page)

220
low-income high school graduates
:
K. Haycock, “Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunities” (Washington, D.C.: Education Trust, 2006).

221
They divided eligible high school graduates
:
E. P. Bettinger, B. T. Long, P. Oreopoulos, and L. Sanbonmatsu,
The Role of Simplification and Information in College Decisions: Results from the H&R Block FAFSA Experiment
. National Bureau of Economic Research, (2009), retrieved from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15361
.

223
allowed to choose their own binding deadlines
:
D. Ariely and K. Wertenbroch, “Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment,”
Psychological Science
13, no. 3 (2002): 219–24.

224
underappreciate the likelihood of many low-probability events
:
C. F. Camerer and H. Kunreuther, “Decision Processes for Low Probability Events: Policy Implications,”
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
8, no. 4 (1989): 565–92.

227
As our island of knowledge grows
:
John A. Wheeler, as quoted in J. Horgan, “The New Challenges,”
Scientific American
267, no. 6 (1992): 10.

231
improve productivity by offering the right financial products and creating bandwidth
:
This idea is being explored by a nonprofit (which we helped found) called ideas42, which uses behavioral insights to create products and policies. The interested reader is invited to visit
www.ideas42.com
.

231
GlowCaps
:
Vitality-About GlowCaps.
Retrieved from
http://www.vitality.net/glowcaps.html
.

This book did not suffer from scarcity of help and good advice. Wonderful collaborators helped shape our ideas and ran crucial studies: Chris Bryan, Lisa Gennetian, Anandi Mani, and Jiaying Zhao. Anuj Shah took the project on with particular force, and was wonderfully insightful and instrumental throughout. We also had extraordinary research assistants: Annie Liang and Shannon White tirelessly and creatively found relevant studies and illustrations. Jessica Gross found some early material, and Lily Jampol and Ani Momjian helped run some studies. They all asked incisive and enthusiastic questions, as did Izzy Gainsburg and David Mackenzie, who joined late yet provided invaluable help and attention. The wonderful folks at ideas42 provided encouragement and inspiration. Katinka Matson helped us see that in the mix of many ideas there was a book worth writing.

The emerging drafts benefited from the wisdom of good friends, colleagues, and loved ones. We especially thank Bindu Ananth, Samura Atallah, Amber Batata, Emily Breza, Andy Conway, Katherine Edin,
Alissa Fishbane, Lawrence Katz, Michael Lewis, Lori Lieberman, Jens Ludwig, Anastasia Mann, Frank Schilbach, Antoinette Schoar, Heather Schofield, Josh Schwartzstein, Sharoni Shafir, Andrei Shleifer, Richard Thaler, Laura Trucco, Nick Turk-Browne, and Eric Wanner. The research for this book was generously supported by the Kellogg Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and the National Institute on Aging, as well as our home institutions, Harvard and Princeton. Students in the classes we taught as the book was taking shape—two at Princeton and two at Harvard—were an excellent early audience, attentive, receptive, and critical. Several other audiences tolerated our not-quite-ready-for-primetime talks and gave terrific feedback. Through it all, Paul Golob was a dream editor, patient and wise.

We have in the last few years consumed more than our fair share of emotional support. For that we are particularly grateful to Amber Batata, Sailu Challapalli, Alissa Fishbane, Srikanth Kadiyala, Anastasia Mann, Jim, Jackie, and Ali Mann, Miri and Sharoni Shafir, and Sophie and Mia Mann-Shafir. And we apologize for the missed phone calls, the missed vacations, the missing bandwidth, and generally for going missing. We’ll blame scarcity for all that.

Collaborations are a famously tricky business. No matter how in synch you are, there will be occasional disagreements and frustration. And yet, at the end of this long road, each of us knows we could not have found a more perfect partner and better friend for the journey. We can only hope all this comes through in the book.

Any shortcomings should not be attributed to all the wonderful people who helped us—we both agree they are the other one’s fault.

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First published in the United States of America by Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC 2013
First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2013

Copyright © Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, 2013

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

Cover image: Gandee Vasan/Getty Images
Cover design by Richard Green

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-141-96119-4