4 Quotes & Sayings By Sendhil Mullainathan

Sendhil Mullainathan is an associate professor of economics at Harvard University. He is also the founder of the Development Lab, a research group that studies the causes and consequences of poverty. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and other major media outlets. He is the author of Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.

1
The present presses automatically on you. The future does not. To attend to the future requires bandwidth, which scarcity taxes. When scarcity taxes our bandwidth, we become even more focused on the here and now. We need cognitive resources to gauge future needs, and we need executive control to resist present temptations. As it taxes our bandwidth, scarcity focuses on the present, and leads us to borrow. Sendhil Mullainathan
2
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 enterprising economists have looked closely at this, and generally, those have assumed that we choose our hours of sleep optimally. Sendhil Mullainathan
3
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 consumers to pay less. And we don't want to bankrupt the government or private insurers. Something must give. Sendhil Mullainathan