A snowball’s chance in this economy: How one bad economic decision can lead to others

These days it seems that economists are the go-to people to explain many of the world’s ills, from sub-prime lending to credit default swaps to Ponzi schemes to the bad, emotionally charged decisions that we make with our own money. Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, has some first-hand insight into how one self-destructive financial decision can thrust us into a downward spiral of many bad decisions. Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and author of Predictably Irrational.