Inspired by Valentine’s Day “Mine” is a short story by sportswriter Patrick Dorsey about the steps that lead, or don’t lead, to a new relationship.  Featured in this story are the Behavioral Economic principles of virtual ownership and the self-fulfilling prophesy.

Read the story here….

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A few months ago I posted four short stories that undergraduate students in my class wrote.

In response to these stories, some readers proposed their own short stories, and today I am posting the fist of these:

Here is “Five Sundays,” By Jamey Stegmaier

Dear Readers –

Over the last few months I have posted a few short fictional stories that some of the students in my class wrote (see this link).

Some were more popular and some were less, but many of you expressed interest in sharing your own fictional short stories or experiences of irrational behaviors

So –If you are interested in submitting a short story, I will post the best of these here, and if you are interested in sharing a kernel of an idea with me, I will take the best of these and try to make a short (fictional) story from it

Please send your stories and / or experiences to living.irrationally at gmail.com.  I look forward to your emails and learning more about the role of irrationality in our lives!

How are people’s judgments affected when they learn of shocking news? How do they see the world differently? Gordon Closter, a student of mine, explores this topic in the latest Predictably Irrational Short Story. It can be found here.

Today we have a dark story about the very controversial topic of end of life decision making that demonstrates what we in decision making studies call the “endowment effect.” Again, this wonderful story is written by another one of my undergraduate behavioral economics students at Duke. Hope you enjoy it! You can find it here.

It’s time for another Predictably Irrational Short Story! This one is a love story the beautifully demonstrates some of the principles of discussed in Predictably Irrational about decision making applied to dating, again written by one of my students at Duke. It’s called “The Dating Game” and you can find it here.

In a follow-up to the much acclaimed “Pinch of Saffron” , this latest Predictably Irrational Short Story is a thrilling Wall Street tale of overpricing CDOs, again written by one of my Behavioral Economics students, Andrew Holmberg. It’s entitled, “Fixed Income”, and you can find it here.

I pleased to announce a new series of short fictional stories written by Duke undergraduate students who took my Behavioral Economics class this last spring.

I will post another one of these stories twice a month for the next few months.

The first story is called “A Pinch of Saffron,” which is about a business executive who redesigns her mother’s traditional Indian restaurant to monetize on people’s irrationalities. You can download it here.