"Predictably Irrational"

I've been meaning to link to this review
of a couple of books on behavioral economics. "Predictably Irrational," a new book by Dan Ariely at MIT sounds like it has some particularly interesting experiments.

In one study, he asked students to look at the last two digits of their social security numbers and then bid on various items. Their social security numbers had marked effects on their bids.

The students whose Social Security number ended with the lowest figures—00 to 19—were the lowest bidders. For all the items combined, they were willing to offer, on average, sixty-seven dollars. The students in the second-lowest group—20 to 39—were somewhat more free-spending, offering, on average, a hundred and two dollars. The pattern continued up to the highest group—80 to 99—whose members were willing to spend an average of a hundred and ninety-eight dollars, or three times as much as those in the lowest group, for the same items.

This effect, which Ariely calls "anchoring," and which retailers such as Tiffany's have been acquainted with for decades (and probably longer) blows conventional economics out of the water. Clean downward sloping demand curves a la Econ. 101 assume rationality on the part of consumers, that they trade off the benefit of consuming the good against the benefit of the other goods they could consume for the same price. If they aren't cold calculators all the time, companies can rely on tricks such as putting other high numbers in the store to set the customer's "anchor" and engine of the free market economy is reduced to a sputter.

This is, however, more of a problem for a lot of academic economists than anyone else. The big money today isn't made on trying to produce commodities that consumers examine with steely eyes and then make a decision based on price. The game is to find a niche demographic and tailor your product to fit their needs. I didn't buy my Mac based on processing power, I bought it because my wife has one, sleek marketing, and because it doesn't feel (and perform) like a hunk of junk.

The key is differentiation, a good businessman doesn't just compete on price. That means that all those pretty supply and demand curves that we were all taught in Econ. 101 are virtually non-existent (they're also pretty damn hard to examine empirically too.) Perhaps this is why economists don't run the world but rather tell others how to?