Saturday, July 19, 2025

Draft Two of Behavioral Econ & the Bard

Yesterday was the deadline for the second of three drafts, and I indeed have a second draft (7,219 words). Still need to do a much better job of melding the "happiness" material, but at least now there is some happiness material. The attentive reader will recall that I also suggested a (rough) draft book prospectus for July 18, 2025, but that has yet to materialize. I will renew my commitment to it, but move the "deadline" to the BE/Bard third draft deadline, August 1, 2025. 

OK, back to regularly scheduled programming....

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Overfulfilling the Plan?

About half a month ago I announced my intention to write a paper on Shakespeare and Behavioral Economics in three drafts, with the first draft due today. I am pleased (and really, shocked) to announce that I have had a first (shortish, about 5,200 words) draft for a week or so already, and even sent it to a friend and got helpful comments back! I'm now trying to expand it a bit with a still-unwritten section on happiness, so I don't yet have a coherent draft 1.5. But I am willing to say that I have overfulfilled the plan for the July 1 deadline. 

I won't post the draft, but here are the section titles:

1. Introduction

2. Three Elements of Prospect Theory

3. Shakespeare on Reference Points and Loss Aversion

4. Shakespeare on Being Risk-Loving in the Loss Domain

5. Reference Points, Sunk Costs, and Subjective Value

6. Happiness (in progress)

7. Conclusion: Choose Your Reference Point Well

The second draft is due on July 18, and I want to maintain (and meet) that deadline. (Not sure that I will indeed include a Happiness section in Draft Two.) But given that I am ahead of schedule, I want to be more ambitious: I want to have a very rough prospectus together by July 18 for a book on Shakespeare and Economics. 

Incidentally, in the post setting up the initial deadlines I also mentioned that I wanted to send Nudging Drug Use off to a journal; I have done so. The prudent behavior would be to have in mind the next journal to send it to after it is rejected... but maybe I have become more resilient? Or not...