John List on "The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life"

Host Michelle Schroeder Fletcher interviews John List, co-author with Uri Gneezy, of "The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life."

Gneezy and List’s approach is to embed themselves in the factories, schools, communities, and offices where people work, live, and play. Then, through large-scale field experiments conducted “in the wild,” Gneezy and List observe people in their natural environments without them being aware that they are observed.

Their randomized experiments have revealed ways to close the gap between rich and poor students; to stop the violence plaguing inner-city schools; to decipher whether women are really less competitive than men; to correctly price products and services; and to discover the real reasons why people discriminate.
 
John A. List grew up in a working-class family in Wisconsin--where his father drove trucks for a living--and learned economics in hobby markets. Dr. List is the Homer J. Livingston Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. He has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics (NBER) for more than a decade and served as senior economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers for environmental resource economics.