IL45: Where Markets Reveal Human Error ft. Alex Imas
Top Traders Unplugged
Mental accounting explained
Alex defines mental accounts and how people mentally segregate money, affecting everyday spending decisions.
Today we discuss one of the most popular and influential economic books of the last few decades - The Winner’s Curse. Originally published in 1994, a new version has just been released and we are joined by co-author Alex Imas who wrote the new edition alongside Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler. When are we likely to spend a windfall and when are we likely to save it? When is it most dangerous to bid for business against competitors? And are ‘arbitrage’ opportunities in markets really a free lunch?
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Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 - Opening remarks and framing the law of one price
01:42 - Introducing the Ideas Lab series and Alex Imas
03:44 - From pre med to behavioral economics
08:15 - Mental accounting and how people really treat money
10:45 - Housing wealth, illiquidity, and self control
15:39 - Savings behavior, capital gains, and inequality
17:11 - Attention, salience, and why nudges work or fail
22:07 - Nudges versus incentives and policy confusion
25:18 - The winner’s curse and common value auctions
30:01 - Auctions, IPOs, and competitive overbidding
33:44 - The law of one price and market mispricing
36:50 - Limits to arbitrage and hidden risks
39:32 - Why mispricing persists even without confusion
43:26 - Why behavioral economics stays outside textbooks
46:53 - What makes decisions difficult and why it matters
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