Our thoughts

Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup? When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we are making intelligent, rational choices. But are we?

This book is about seeking a human perspective on economic and organisational processes. It lays the foundations for a value-based approach to the economy. The key questions are: 'What is important to you or your organisation?' and 'What is this action or that organisation good for?' The book is directed at the prevalence of instrumentalist thinking in the current economy and responds to the calls for another economy. The value-based approach is another type of economics; it focuses on the most important goods such as families, homes, communities, knowledge, and art.

In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein demonstrate the way noise produces errors in many fields, including in medicine, law, public health, economic forecasting, forensic science, child protection, creative strategy, performance review and hiring. Although noise can be found wherever people make judgements and decisions, individuals and organisations commonly ignore its impact at great cost.