This summer I went to a conference for behavioural economists and economic psychologists. The presentations were entertaining.
Did you know that when coffee is given a fair trade label, people say it tastes better, even if it's just regular coffee? And fair trade coffee, without the fair trade label, doesn't taste as good?*
Did you know that an increase in a co-worker's pay will cause a person to reduce her own work effort?**
But somehow the intellectual excitement wasn't there.
Then I met Pete Lunn, an economic psychologist, who articulated the cause for my disquiet.
