Organ donation rates are an often used example of the power of defaults. Take the following passage by Dan Ariely, explaining this (also often used) chart from Johnson and Goldstein (2003) (ungated pdf): One of my favorite graphs in all of social science is the following plot from an inspiring paper by Eric Johnson and Daniel Goldstein. This graph shows the percentage of people, across different European countries, who are willing to donate their organs after they pass away.

Late last year I went to a presentation by Schlomo Benartzi on how people think differently when they are using a screen. The punchline was that many of the classic behavioural biases do not play out as expected in digital mediums. One example Benartzi gave involved defaults. The standard understanding is that defaults are powerful ways to influence behaviour - people will tend to stick to them. But Benartzi spoke of digital experiments with pre-populated checkboxes where people went out of their way to untick the box.

Links this week: Each of us descends many times over from a great many sexual despots. In every generation, we forget how much poorer we used to be. Regression and other related non-experimental pattern-finding methods of this type can sound hyper-technical and very gee-whiz (“support vector machines” – cool!), and they can serve various useful purposes. … But they are simply not fit for the task of making reliable, non-obvious predictions for the effects of most contested policy interventions.

It has taken a while for this month’s Cato Unbound, “Can Public Policy Stop Obesity?”, to warm up. But Christopher Snowdon’s latest post is full of good material. He takes on the question of whether obesity is a drain on the public purse, whether we consumer high sugar soda because we have no no choice, and the burden of sugar taxation. The opening is particularly pointed. Is obesity a public health problem?

As someone whose diet broadly (in an 80:20 way) reflects paleo principles, I consume the occasional book on the subject. The latest is John Durant’s The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health, which (thankfully) didn’t just repeat the same information you’ll hear over and over again if you dip your toes into the paleo literature. I won’t offer a blow-by-blow of the account of the book, but it has some nice elements.

“Nudges” change the decision environment so that people make “better” decisions, while retaining freedom of choice. Fitting within what Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler call “libertarian paternalism”, nudges are often framed as alternatives to coercive measures. If you can nudge most people toward the “right” decision through the way you frame the choice, the coercive measure is not required. A recent example is the introduction of default retirement savings in Illinois.

Links this week: We see skill where none exists and are happy to pay for transparently useless advice. No evidence of the effect of parenting on criminal behaviour. Doug Kenrick on testosterone and the rationality of taking risks. Pulling apart the recent paper on perceptions of ability and the gender gap. The human guinea pig. Distrust of vaccines not a left wing issue.

In social science, a myriad of factors can affect outcomes. Think of all the factors claimed to affect school achievement - student characteristics such as intelligence, conscientiousness, patience and willingness to work hard, parental characteristics such as income and education, and then there is genetics, socioeconomic status, school peers, teacher quality, class size, local crime and so on. In assessing the effect of any policy or program, researchers typically attempt to control for these confounding factors.

My recent reading of David Colander and Roland Kupers’s Complexity and the Art of Public Policy prompted me to re-read James Manzi’s Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society. I see the two books as riffs on a similar theme. I’ll post a review of Uncontrolled later this week, but in the meantime, Manzi provides an interesting take on the Donohue-Levitt abortion-crime hypothesis. Their hypothesis is that abortion reduces crime as unwanted children are more likely to become criminals.

Links this week: Does public policy promote obesity? This month’s Cato Unbound on whether public policy can stop obesity could be interesting when the discussion begins, but the response essays so far have generally talked past each other. Three links via Tyler Cowen. New cars fake their engine noise. People turn down high-cost low-value treatments when they can pocket part of the savings. The right won the economics debate; left and right are just haggling over details.