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The papers collected in this volume represent the main body of research arising from the International Munich Centenary Conference in 2001, which commemorated the discovery of the famous Russell Paradox a hundred years ago. The 31 contributions and the introductory essay by the editor were (with two exceptions) all originally written for the volume. The volume serves a twofold purpose, historical and systematic. One focus is on Bertrand Russell's logic and logical philosophy, taking into account the rich sources of the Russell Archives, many of which have become available only recently. The second equally important aim is to present original research in the broad range of foundational studies that draws on both current conceptions and recent technical advances in the above-mentioned fields. The volume contributes therefore, to the well-established body of mathematical philosophy initiated to a large extent by Russell's work. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: Press of the New era printing company in 1915 in 29 pages; Subjects: Logic, Symbolic and mathematical; Mathematics / General; Mathematics / History & Philosophy; Mathematics / Logic; Philosophy / General; Philosophy / Logic; Philosophy / History & Surveys / Modern; ... Read more

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The rationale of economics has come to dominate political and institutional life in recent years. However, many economic assumptions have received only scant study. This book examines the many anomalies that abound in even simple economic transactions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Best book out there in the Popular economics genre
This book is a little heavy on the math, which I enjoyed at times but at other times felt really lost and not too eager to go look up the referenced journal articles for the full explanation on the formulas used.

The other benefit of all the math is it makes all the points that Thaler raises in this book much more scientifically based.This book isn't pseudoscience.

That said, it's not like this book is a math textbook.In the style of Freakonomics, (although the Winner's Curse was written about a decade earlier) Thaler just jumps from one cool behavioral economics example to the next.

The thing from this book that stuck with me the most was the chapter on positive expected value lotteries.Apparently, they pop up every so often.Unfortunatley you need a billion dollar bankroll to take advantage of them, and I don't think Thaler included taxes when he was doing the expected value calculations, so they might not really exist at all.

Very good seller. Shipped Quickly. Product in Great Condition.
The seller was prompt and the product was like new. What else can you ask for? Great transaction.

Very interesting
It gives you a great overview of some of the strange inconsitencies in human behavior.It is more than just a finance book and has many interesting stories that you can talk about with friends later.

Behavioral economics for the real world.
The "Winners Curse" is a book about behavioral economics.It applies experimental human psychological studies to economic behavior.It consists of 14 chapters, each devoted to a different "anomaly" in economic behavior.The term anomaly is used by the author to denote behavior that runs counter to the assumptions of most theoretical economic models, which assume that people act in a rational and greedy manner.To me (not an economist), that anyone would base a theory on the assumptions of rational human behavior and that people are always greedy (seeking the maximum economic gain) is a bit irrational.It does not come as a surprise to me that people act irrationally and that they can sometimes act for the common good, instead of seeking maximum personal gain.

Each chapter starts with a brief hypothetical problem.Some are based on real problems, (such as playing the lottery, betting on horses, the calendar effect on stock market prices, foreign currency exchange problems, ...) or based on model games, (such as bargaining games, games where cooperation is required, auction games,....).The results of these experimental games and the statistical data on human behavior in real situations (such as stock market purchases) are then compared to the predictions of the theoretical models that assume rationality and greed.The point of the book is that it can be experimentally shown that people act irrationally (from an economic perspective) and can act in a manner that does not seek the maximum personal gain.The author does not believe that this spells the end for theoretical economic modeling, only that more psychological input is required.

This book is interesting, but in my opinion it is neither fish nor fowl. I do not think that it is rigorous enough to satisfy an economist, but is somewhat too complicated in spots for general readers.After the general statement of the problem there is a discussion of the experimental data that bears on the problem.This discussion can be hard for a non-economist (me) to follow at times.That said, I enjoyed book and got a lot of interesting information from it.I learned why it is sometimes a good deal (yielding a positive expected value) to play the lottery and what the most commonly chosen numbers are.The author also points out that this does not mean that you will win, only that if you and your descendants played at the correct times for a thousand years or so, you would eventually make more than what you would spend on tickets.In some situations it is thus favorable to buy tickets covering all the possible combinations, but you would need millions of dollars and a way to physically buy millions of tickets. I learned the best days to buy or sell a stock (at least statistically on which days the market tends to go up and on which it tends to go down).

By the way, the Winners Curse refers to the winner of an auction being cursed because the price paid was too high.I learned that with many bidders it is best to lower the maximum price that you are willing to pay.Unfortunately, doing this means that you will seldom get the item, but when you do succeed you will not be cursed by paying too much.

All in all, stick with it.If necessary, skip over some of the discussion of the experimental data and go to the concluding remarks for each chapter.I found it to be worth the effort.

Highly Recommended!
We highly recommend this classic of economic literature, one of the first (more or less) accessible presentations of the evidence against economic rationality. Economists have assumed, conventionally, that economic choice rests on a foundation of rationality. For instance, economists tend to think that people will put the same value on two mathematically identical offers. Yet laboratory experiments have proven what everyday experience suggests: people are not quite rational. Author Richard H. Thaler, a founding father of behavioral economics, presents convincing exhibits to make the case that the assumption of economic rationality is an awfully big pill to swallow. Stylistically, his book strikes a neat balance between accessibility and obscurity. A reader will need a certain amount of schooling in economics and a great deal of patience with academic prose to wade through every word of every chapter, although the payoff is substantial. However, it is possible for the impatient reader to get the gist by reading the introduction, the first page or two of each chapter and the epilogue. And even that is eminently worthwhile. ... Read more

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It is not without hesitation that I have taken upon myself the editorship of a work left avowedly imperfect by the author, and, from its miscellaneous and discursive character, difficult of completion with due regard to editorial limitations by a less able hand. ... Read more

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With the general run of the philosophical atheists of the last century the notion of a God was an hypothesis. There was left an admitted possibility that the vague somewhat which went by more names than one, might be personal, intelligent, and superintendent. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox (also known as Russell's antinomy), discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory of Richard Dedekind and Frege leads to a contradiction. The very same paradox had been discovered a year before by Ernst Zermelo but he did not publish the idea, which remained known only to Hilbert, Husserl and other members of the University of Göttingen. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Science and Its Times, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1147 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The histories of science, technology, and mathematics merge with the study of humanities and social science in this interdisciplinary reference work. Essays on people, theories, discoveries, and concepts are combined with overviews, bibliographies of primary documents, and chronological elements to offer students a fascinating way to understand the impact of science on the course of human history and how science affects everyday life. Entries represent people and developments throughout the world, from about 2000 B.C. through the end of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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Chapters: Russell's Paradox, Bertrand Russell's Views on Philosophy, Axiom of Reducibility, Bertrand Russell's Views on Society, Richard Wiggs, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, Theory of Descriptions, Logicomix, Knowledge by Acquaintance, Logical Atomism, Russell's Teapot, Lionel Britton, Definite Description, Knowledge by Description, the Bertrand Russell Case, John Russell, Viscount Amberley, Patricia Russell, Edith Finch Russell, Remember Your Humanity. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 153. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist, and social critic. Although he spent most of his life in England, he was born in Wales where he also died, aged 97. Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the early 1900s. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his protégé Wittgenstein and his predecessor Frege, and is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy." Both works have had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, and philosophy. He was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free trade between nations and anti-imperialism. Russell was imprisoned for his pacifist activism during World War I, campaigned against Adolf Hitler, for nuclear disarmament, criticised Soviet totalitarianism and the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=4163 ... Read more

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Chapters: Russell's Paradox, 466 Tisiphone, Trouton-noble Experiment, Gk Persei, Solar Eclipse of May 18, 1901, 1901 in Paleontology, 1901 in Archaeology, Solar Eclipse of November 11, 1901. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 41. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox (also known as Russell's antinomy), discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory of Richard Dedekind and Frege leads to a contradiction. The very same paradox had been discovered a year before by Ernst Zermelo but he did not publish the idea, which remained known only to Hilbert, Husserl and other members of the University of Göttingen. Therefore priority goes to Russell and the paradox is known by his name. It might be assumed that, for any formal criterion, a set exists whose members are those objects (and only those objects) that satisfy the criterion; but this assumption is disproved by a set containing exactly the sets that are not members of themselves. If such a set qualifies as a member of itself, it would contradict its own definition as a set containing sets that are not members of themselves. On the other hand, if such a set is not a member of itself, it would qualify as a member of itself by the same definition. This contradiction is Russell's paradox. In 1908, two ways of avoiding the paradox were proposed, Russell's type theory and the Zermelo set theory, the first constructed axiomatic set theory. Zermelo's axioms went well beyond Frege's axioms of extensionality and unlimited set abstraction, and evolved into the now-canonical ZermeloFraenkel set theory (ZF). Let us call a set "abnormal" if it is a member of itself, and "normal" otherwise. For example, take the set of all squares. That set is not itself a square, and therefore is n...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=46095 ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox (also known as Russell's antinomy), discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory of Richard Dedekind and Frege leads to a contradiction. The very same paradox had been discovered a year before by Ernst Zermelo but he did not publish the idea, which remained known only to Hilbert, Husserl and other members of the University of Göttingen. Therefore priority goes to Russell and the paradox is known by his name. It might be assumed that, for any formal criterion, a set exists whose members are those objects (and only those objects) that satisfy the criterion; but this assumption is disproved by a set containing exactly the sets that are not members of themselves. If such a set qualifies as a member of itself, it would contradict its own definition as a set containing sets that are not members of themselves. On the other hand, if such a set is not a member of itself, it would qualify as a member of itself by the same definition. This contradiction is Russell's paradox. In 1908, two ways of avoiding the paradox were proposed, Russell's type theory and the Zermelo set theory, the first constructed axiomatic set theory. Zermelo's axioms went well beyond Frege's axioms of extensionality and unlimited set abstraction, and evolved into the now-canonical ZermeloFraenkel set theory (ZF). Let us call a set "abnormal" if it is a member of itself, and "normal" otherwise. For example, take the set of all squares. That set is not itself a square, and therefore is not a member of the set of all squares. So it is "normal". On the other hand, if we take the complementary set that contains all non-squares, that set is itself not a square and so should be one of its own members. It is "... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=46095 ... Read more

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Chapters: Paradox, Russell's Paradox, Problem of Evil, Impossible Object, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, Zeno's Paradoxes, Epimenides Paradox, Liar Paradox, Barber Paradox, Raven Paradox, Voting Paradox, Newcomb's Paradox, Unexpected Hanging Paradox, Omnipotence Paradox, Strange Loop, Chicken or the Egg, All Horses Are the Same Color, List of Paradoxes, D'alembert's Paradox, Ship of Theseus, Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship, French Paradox, Sorites Paradox, Moore's Paradox, Perceptual Paradox, When a White Horse Is Not a Horse, Barbershop Paradox, Ellsberg Paradox, Problem of Future Contingents, Apportionment Paradox, Mere Addition Paradox, Paradox of the Pesticides, Liberal Paradox, Catch-22, Lottery Paradox, Elevator Paradox, Paradoxes of Material Implication, Fitch's Paradox of Knowability, Chainstore Paradox, Buridan's Ass, Paradox of Hedonism, Round Square Copula, C-Value Enigma, Drinker Paradox, Abilene Paradox, Balls and Vase Problem, Grelling-nelson Paradox, Kavka's Toxin Puzzle, Hardy's Paradox, Boltzmann Brain, Observer's Paradox, Hobson's Choice, Paradox of the Court, Buttered Cat Paradox, the Treachery of Images, Paradox of Analysis, Quine's Paradox, Coastline Paradox, Paradox of the Plankton, Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi, Mexican Paradox, Bracketing Paradox, Discursive Dilemma, Bonini's Paradox, Crocodile Dilemma, Irresistible Force Paradox, Exception Paradox, Movement Paradox, Paradoxology, Applicability Domain, Hispanic Paradox, Preface Paradox, Paradox of Tolerance, Faraday Paradox, Algol Paradox, Lombard's Paradox, Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?, Icarus Paradox, Prevention Paradox, Code-Talker Paradox, Nihilist Paradox, Socratic Paradox, Nikodym Set, Mandeville's Paradox, Milner-rado Paradox, Yablo's Paradox, Excusable Negligence, Absence Paradox. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 430. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can se...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=37391 ... Read more

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"With the general run of the philosophical atheists of the last century the notion of a God was an hypothesis. There was left an admitted possibility that the vague somewhat which went by more names than one, might be personal, intelligent, and superintendent." ... Read more

Product Description
With the general run of the philosophical atheists of the last century the notion of a God was an hypothesis. There was left an admitted possibility that the vague somewhat which went by more names than one, might be personal, intelligent, and superintendent.
... Read more

Product Description
It is not without hesitation that I have taken upon myself the editorship of a work left avowedly imperfect by the author, and, from its miscellaneous and discursive character, difficult of completion with due regard to editorial limitations by a less able hand.
... Read more

Product Description
It is not without hesitation that I have taken upon myself the editorship of a work left avowedly imperfect by the author, and, from its miscellaneous and discursive character, difficult of completion with due regard to editorial limitations by a less able hand.
... Read more

Product Description
With the general run of the philosophical atheists of the last century the notion of a God was an hypothesis. There was left an admitted possibility that the vague somewhat which went by more names than one, might be personal, intelligent, and superintendent.
... Read more