Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir's new book has received an abundance of national and international attention. Their recently published book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, examines the many ways in which scarcity can and does affect people. IQSS affiliates Mullainathan and Shafir explain how scarcity—in forms such as poverty, loneliness, or scheduling constraints—overloads a person's "mental bandwidth." That strain on cognitive resources can in turn negatively affect one's job performance, decision-making skills, or self-control. Mullainathan and Shafir then use findings in economics and behavioral science research to explore possible solutions on both an individual and a societal level.
More information on Scarcity—including excerpts, reviews and author commentary—can be found here. Mullainathan discusses the book with Harold Pollack (UChicago) for the Washington Post's Wonkblog. The book was also included on the longlist for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
Sendhil Mullainathan, professor in the FAS Department of Economics, and Eldar Shafir, the William Stewart Tod Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton, are co-founders of ideas42, a behavioral economics lab that seeks to understand social problems through data analysis.
