经济学人:合理的怀疑:信用卡账单到了(2)

 　　Mr Thaler, an American born in New Jersey¹ in 1945, spent most of his early career at Cornell University before moving to the University of Chicago in 1995. 赛勒，这位1945年出生在新泽西州的美国人，在1995年转投芝加哥大学之前，在康奈尔大学渡过了他早期学术生涯的大部分时间。

　　Unusually for an economist², he is known for the clarity of his ideas and the quality of his writing. 对于一位经济学家来说，不同寻常的是，他以观点的明晰和写作的质量而著称。

　　“Nudge”, a book co-written with Cass Sunstein, is both an extraordinarily³ influential⁴ work and a bestseller. 《助推》(Nudge)，这本他与凯斯·桑斯坦合写的书，既是一本具有特殊影响力的著作，也是一本畅销书。

　　Its lessons have been adopted by governments across the world; “nudge units” in America and Britain studied how to boost saving and taxpaying,  该书的经验教训已经被世界各地的政府所采纳：在美国和英国，“助推小组”已经对如何提高储蓄、促进缴税、

　　encourage healthy behaviour and reduce energy use. 鼓励健康的行为和降低能源使用展开了研究。

　　“Nudge” drew on years of work by Mr Thaler and co-authors identifying oddities in human behaviour. 《助推》综合了赛勒与合作者在辨识人类行为的异常方面所进行的多年研究。

　　Setting out to explore why people feel losses more keenly than gains, he helped uncover the endowment effect: a tendency to value something more highly just because you own it. 着手去探究为什么人们对损失比对收获感觉更强烈的他，促成了禀赋效应——这种仅仅是因为自己拥有就将其当作宝贝的倾向——的发现。

　　To detect it, he distributed coffee mugs at random⁵ to half of a group of test subjects, who were then invited to sell the mug, if they wished, to the other, mugless half. 为了探究这一效应，他把咖啡杯随机分发给了测试对象中的一半。之后，这一半测试对象受邀把杯子卖给没有杯子的另一半，如果他们希望这做的话。

　　Theory would predict that those with and without mugs should value them the same, on average, and so about half of the mugs should change hands. 理论会预期，总的来说，有杯子的没有杯子的应当对这些杯子给出一样的估价。因而，约有一半的杯子应当换手。

　　In fact, those with mugs valued them more than those without. 实际上，有杯子比没有杯子更把杯子当成宝贝。

　　Offers to buy the mugs by the have-nots were usually too low to convince the haves to sell, and relatively⁶ few transactions took place. 没有杯子的出价通常又太低，没法让有杯子的卖出杯子，因而只有相当少的交易发生。

　　This finding, since replicated⁷ many times, suggested that the context of an economic choice matters. 由于被反复做了多次，这一发现表明，经济选择的背景很重要。

　　That, in turn, means that the way choices are framed, by firms or governments, can influence how people respond. 反过来，这又说说明，选择被企业和政府所构建的方式可能影响人们如何应对。

1 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

2 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

3 extraordinarily   

adv.格外地；极端地

参考例句：

• She is an extraordinarily beautiful girl.她是个美丽非凡的姑娘。
• The sea was extraordinarily calm that morning.那天清晨，大海出奇地宁静。

4 influential   

adj.有影响的，有权势的

参考例句：

• He always tries to get in with the most influential people.他总是试图巴结最有影响的人物。
• He is a very influential man in the government.他在政府中是个很有影响的人物。

5 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

6 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

7 replicated   

复制( replicate的过去式和过去分词 )； 重复； 再造； 再生

参考例句：

• Later outplant the seedlings in a replicated permanent test plantation. 以后苗木出圃栽植成重复的永久性试验林。
• The phage has replicated and the donor cells have lysed. 噬菌体已复制和给体细胞已发生裂解。