Cognitive Anomalies and Public Policy

This course will survey the accumulated zoo of cognitive anomalies, starting with those prominent in Thaler & Sunstein's recent Nudge (Yale 2008) on applications to public policy. We will be considering various explanations of why the anomalies occur, and looking always for possible applications to public policy. Grades will be based on a term paper which may be either a discussion (pro or con) of the relevance of some anomaly to an issue of public policy, or an experimental paper exploring some novel idea about what governs some anomaly.