This book is about bounded rationality and public policy. It is written
from the p- spective of someone trained in public economics who has
encountered the enormous literature on experiments in decision-making
and wonders what implications it has for the normative aspects of public
policy. Though there are a few new results or models, to a large degree
the book is synthetic in tone, bringing together disparate literatures
and seeking some accommodation between them. It has had a long genesis.
It began with a draft of a few chapters in 2000, but has expanded in
scope and size as the literature on behavioural economics has grown. At
some point I realised that the geometric growth of behavioural - search
and the arithmetic growth of my writing were inconsistent with an am-
tion to be exhaustive. As such therefore I have concentrated on
particular areas of behavioural economics and bounded rationality. The
resulting book is laid out as follows: Chapter 1 provides an overview of
the rest of the book, goes through some basic de?nitions and identi?es
themes.