Scarcity

Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, 2013

Learn why having too little time or money captures the mind and drains mental bandwidth, and how building in slack and smarter design can help people escape the scarcity trap.

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14 parts, about 23 minutes to read.

Why read it

Argues that having too little of anything, money, time or food, captures the mind in a common way and taxes judgment
Helps you see why the poor, the busy and dieters make similar mistakes, and how to build slack into plans
Tests the idea with lab games and field studies from malls to Indian farms, comparing the same people in different circumstances

Who it is for

Overbooked professionals who keep falling behind
Designers of welfare, credit or training programs
Managers who blame staff mistakes on carelessness

What the summary covers

Too busy not to1 min
Scarcity captures the mind2 min
The focus dividend1 min
Tunneling2 min
The bandwidth tax3 min
Packing and slack1 min
Experts in the value of money1 min
Borrowing and myopia2 min
The scarcity trap3 min
Why poverty is different2 min
Designing for scarcity2 min
Slack in organizations1 min
Scarcity proofing daily life1 min
Bandwidth and abundance1 min

Recommended by

Daniel KahnemanNobel laureate in economics
Stars in their respective disciplines, and the combination is greater than the sum of its parts. Their project has a unique feel to it: it is the finest combination of heart and head that I have seen in our field
Steven D. LevittAuthor of Freakonomics
is a captivating book, overflowing with new ideas, fantastic stories, and simple suggestions that just might change the way you live
Richard ThalerNobel laureate in economics
Here is a winning recipe. Take a behavioral economist and a cognitive psychologist, each a prominent leader in his field, and let their creative minds commingle. What you get is a highly original and easily readable book that is full of intriguing insights.

About the authors

Sendhil MullainathanMacArthur Fellow and MIT professor of economics
- Born in a small farming village in Tamil Nadu, India; moved to the Los Angeles area in 1980
- B.A. from Cornell in 1993; Ph.D. in economics from Harvard
- Cofounder of Ideas 42 and the MIT Poverty Action Lab
- Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant; works on development and behavioral economics
Eldar ShafirProfessor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University
- Born 1959; American behavioral scientist and co author of Scarcity
- Graduated from Brown; Ph.D. in cognitive science from MIT in 1988
- Co founder and scientific director of Ideas42
- Guggenheim Fellowship 2012, to continue research on the psychology of scarcity