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January 2, 2008

Slate.com On Keeping Your New Year's Resolution

Now that I'm commuting again (I took the last two weeks off), I'm getting caught up on my podcasts, and listened to a great one from Slate called, "Rationalizing Resolutions: Can economics make you a better person?":

Economists rarely make good forecasts, but let me venture one: Most readers of this column will eat and drink heavily over the next couple of weeks (as will its writer), and many of us will, on Jan. 1, vow to do better in the future. Can economics provide a little assistance in coping with this annual ritual?

I think it can, and so do three economists at Yale who've been helping me out. Professors Dean Karlan and Ian Ayres (who is also a law professor and the author of Super Crunchers), along with Jordan Goldberg, a business-school student, have a check from me for $1,000.

If I do not do 200 push-ups and 200 sit-ups each week, they'll start sending my money to a charity, $100 at a time. (I chose the hugely deserving D.C. Central Kitchen.) They will shortly offer the same dubious privilege to countless others via a new company, Stickk.com.

The piece was interesting to me, mostly because the idea of a Web site that motivates you to keep promises to yourself by holding a pool of cash hostage is pretty nifty. Jeff and I had a running weight bet for most of last year, where we'd each offer to pay the other $10 for each pound we failed to lose, relative to our specific goal. As luck would have it, we both made such lousy progress that wound up resetting the bet (three or four times, as memory serves), and calling 'no harm, no foul.' If we had to park, say, $300 each in escrow and watch it go to charity if we slipped ... well, I suspect we'd have been $600 poorer between the two of us, but certainly more motivated.

The article is certainly worth a quick read.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at January 2, 2008 1:52 PM. Posted to Entertainment.

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