Sendhil Mullainathan

“Marketing is selling an ad to a firm. So, in some sense, a lot of marketing is about convincing a CEO, 'This is a good ad campaign.' So, there is a little bit of slippage there. That's just...”

“Task switching is hard because we do not control what is on our mind. Despite our efforts, the original task continues to occupy our mental bandwidth. Although we can control where our time...”

“Busy people all make the same mistake: they assume they are short on time, which of course, they are. But time is not their only scarce resource. They are also short on bandwidth. By bandwid...”

“Organizations talk about spending their lives firefighting - dealing with the next problem without having the bandwidth to deal with what is down the pipeline. I think most of the poor have...”

“January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study wh...”

“Serial tasking is hard because switching tasks is hard, even when the tasks are easy and similar. In some experiments, bilingual speakers are asked to read out numbers, first in one language...”

“We ought to arrange calendars as we arrange art on our walls and ask: how does this task fit next to the surrounding ones?”

“Our outrage at inequality is primal. But primal emotions are not always noble ones. Of course, when I see a colleague receive some award, I covet it. But this is not me at my best, and these...”

“As a researcher, every once in a while you encounter something a little disconcerting. And this is something that changes your understanding of the world around you, and teaches you that you...”

“The amount of resources we put in are disparate. We put billions of dollars into fuel-efficient technologies. How much are we putting into energy behavior change in a credible, systematic, t...”

“Time can be dissected easily: an hour can be cut up in many ways. Fifteen minutes on this memo, a five-minute walk to another meeting, 30 minutes at that meeting and then 10 minutes debriefi...”

“The scarcity trap captures this notion we see again and again in many domains. When people have very little, they undertake behaviors that maintain or reinforce their future disadvantage. If...”

“Some struggle with medical issues - like insomnia - that make sleep hard. But for many of us, the quantity and quality of sleep come down to a matter of choice. Still, only a few enterprisin...”

“The problem with data is that it says a lot, but it also says nothing. 'Big data' is terrific, but it's usually thin. To understand why something is happening, we have to engage in both fore...”

“I worry about growing income inequality. But I worry even more that the discussion is too narrowly focused. I worry that our outrage at the top 1 percent is distracting us from the problem t...”

“If someone who is poor says, 'I may not have much money, but for me, what's really important is to have a good television so my family can enjoy and watch,' we should be a little careful and...”

“A few drugs - such as beta-blockers, statins and glycogen control medications - have proved very effective at managing hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and strokes. Most insurance plans...”

“Web searching and cellphone use both flourish in the wee hours. Before the dawn of the web, I would stay up watching television. But there is something soporific about television: I would of...”

“People will often take an interesting experimental study which has been done in the world, perhaps at small scale, and then it's touted as some big solution.”

“Economists specialize in pointing out unpleasant trade-offs - a skill that is on full display in the health care debate. We want patients to receive the best care available. We also want con...”