The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life Paperback – 1 Jan. 2015

Great short book, easy to read and accessible. Thus will make you ponder large problems and small, strategic and operational. You will be offered lots of ideas and encouraged to give it a go - carry out your own experiments!

Interesting book but having read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, I'm not sure I learned much.

What I like to this book is the way the 2 authors try to apply as much as possible the "out-of-lab" or field experiments to real world. It is very interesting that some thoughts and theories and hypothesis seem to describe so elegantly the reality until the reality itself proves otherwise. One example: theory says that children should not be motivated with money in order to learn because if we do this then they will make learning linked to an external motivation while we should strive for their internal motivation on learning. But guess what?! For some children it does work! "Bribing" them with money or gifts can actually make them to want to learn more.

This book sounded interesting and I wanted to love it. But it's only good, not great. There is a lot of good things to say - it's based on years of empirical research, the topics vary and range from discrimination to helping Chinese factories. Everything is clearly explained, but I think that as the authors discovered the book would be too short, they added a lot of unnecessary narrative nonsense. They explain experimental designs on one page and then spend 5 pages describing hunting down participants in excruciating detail. They don't really spend much time explaining experimental designs, caveats, biases etc., just the outcomes, policy recommendations and some feedback.It's a really short book on interesting topics in experimental economics from people who actually did those experiments. Fun, but not great, especially if you're an economist. Would recommend as light summer reading for non-economists.

Amazing

Review courtesy of www.subtleillumination.comPaying students for marks gives them an incentive to study. Does it also crowd out intrinsic incentives for the same, crippling students by making them unable to study when they are not immediately paid for it? If a gay couple tries to buy a car, does the dealership discriminate against them because they are inherently hostile to gays, or because they believe they can increase their profits by doing so? Should charities allow people to opt out of receiving mailings, and if so, will that increase or decrease donations?If you are a teachers’ union, activist, or charity, you likely have strong opinions on the answer. What you may not have is any actual knowledge. Gneezy and List, two great experimental economists, argue that fundamental questions such as the best ways to educate, fight discrimination, and run businesses lie at the heart of experimentation.To understand discrimination, they tried having gay couples purchase cars while signalling they planned to check other dealerships, and found that discrimination disappeared; to understand charitable giving, they experiment with several different approaches, finding that having a pretty girl ask for donations and offering a lottery prize for donating are equally effective in increasing donations, but that the lottery has long term effects while the pretty girl does not. Giving people the opportunity to opt out of mailings is most effective of all, however, increasing initial donations, leaving long-term donations unchanged, and saving money on mailings.The Why Axis is another in a stream of books by economists popularizing their work. As with many such, it is reasonably well written, and stocked full of anecdotes, stories, and examples. In addition, Gneezy and List argue passionately for a more experimental way of looking at the world. Whether we are considering a new job, a new product, or a new policy, trying it out on a small scale provides information essential to avoiding blunders. In that spirit, pick up a paper or two of theirs to see if you find them interesting, and if so, the book might well be worth it.

Interesting but repetitive. After the first time we are told to go out and experiment, the story has pretty much been told. The examples given are useful but the book does feel like it runs out of steam about half way through. It was worth reading but much more could have been made of the book.