Scarcity (book)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scarcity - What It Does To Us When We Have Too Little is a non-fiction book by the American economist Sendhil Mullainathan and the American psychologist Eldar Shafir . The book was first published in 2013 by Penguin Books in London and in the same year by the Frankfurt Campus Verlag in the German translation by Carl Freytag. The book was published in English under the titles Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much and Scarcity. The True Cost of Not Having Enough .

The subject of the book is the common properties that scarcity in any form has on the people concerned.

Definition of scarcity

The authors define scarcity as follows: “Having less than you think you need.” Their definition thus differs from the common use of the word scarcity in economics . In economics, the term is used objectively - scarcity is when there is no abundance - and it is applied to goods. Mullainathan and Shafir, on the other hand, speak of subjectively experienced scarcity and of scarcity in any form.

Forms of scarcity

Scarcity can occur in many areas. The authors mainly mention:

  • Shortage of money. This can be poverty in the classic sense, but also a temporary liquidity problem.
  • Shortage of time. Examples are general work overload or perceived as stressful date (deadline).
  • Shortage of food. This particularly affects people suffering from hunger , but also people who follow a strict diet.
  • Shortage of social contacts ( loneliness ).

Effects of scarcity

The authors note that all forms of scarcity have three effects:

  • Target focus as a result of tunnel vision ("focus dividend")
  • Operational blindness as a result of tunnel vision ("tunnel tax")
  • Loss of fluid intelligence (referred to as "bandwidth" in the book)

Focus dividend

Scarcity leads to target focusing (“focus dividend”), e.g. B. by fading out disturbances coming from outside. Anyone who has to do a job in a short period of time (lack of time) switches off faults such as smartphones or e-mails. According to a study, poor people (lack of money) know the price of the goods they buy much better than rich people after shopping.

Tunnel tax

At the same time, tunnel vision leads to losses - e-mails that are switched off as a source of interference can contain essential information, and a look at the price can obscure the quality of the goods.

Loss of fluid intelligence

The authors found the loss of fluid intelligence as the most important negative influence. The authors carried out experiments in which participants were placed in scarcity situations. In a subsequent Raven test, these participants got 13-14 IQ points worse. The authors see this as evidence that scarcity (even hypothetical scarcity) occupies mental resources so much that fluid intelligence is greatly reduced.

Recommendations for action

Aiming due to scarcity can be helpful in solving problems. The authors name, among other things, financial restrictions in companies that lead to downsizing or deliberate setting of deadlines.

The loss of fluid intelligence must be taken into account especially in social programs. In particular, the design of funding programs should take into account that errors and omissions on the part of the funding recipients often resulted from scarcity restrictions. Furthermore, the targeted use of target focusing should also be ensured here.

Reviews

The work was well discussed. Michael Holmes writes in the world :

“In their captivating and factual book“ Knappheit ”, Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan and Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir use anecdotes and experiments to vividly show us“ what it does to us when we have too little ”. You research the "all-encompassing logic of scarcity" in different countries and areas of life. "

Rico Kutscher states in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung :

"The book is written in an exciting way and offers a good overview, even if the theory and the examples taken are not new. At the same time, however, it becomes clear that many aid programs for eliminating scarcity have completely wrong approaches and failure is often inevitable. "

A description of the contents of the book can be found in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

literature

References and footnotes

  1. ↑ Michael Holmes: Poverty: How nothing can become anything. In: welt.de. January 6, 2014, accessed July 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Rico Kutscher: Escape the shortage trap. In: nzz.ch. NZZ, October 2, 2013, accessed on July 9, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Lena Schipper: Feels too little: In the shortage trap. In: faz.net. FAZ, September 21, 2013, accessed on July 9, 2020 .