In their new book, Phishing for Phools, Nobel-prize winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller use a behavioral economics approach to criticize the “manipulation and deception” that can exist between businesses and consumers.
According to Shiller,
[a] fundamental concept of psychology is that people often make decisions they’re not happy about. … If businesses have a chance to profit by tempting us into making decisions that are good for them but bad for us, they will take it. They have just as powerful an incentive to provide us with what...


