Ever since Adam Smith the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us
with material well-being as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools Nobel
Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to
this insight arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be
made sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance
through manipulation and deception. Rather than being essentially benign and always creating
the greater good markets are inherently filled with tricks and traps and will phish us as
phools. Phishing for Phools explores the central role of manipulation and deception in
fascinating detail in each of these areas and many more. It thereby explains a paradox: why at
a time when we are better off than ever before in history all too many of us are leading lives
of quiet desperation. At the same time the book tells stories of individuals who have stood
against economic trickery--and how it can be reduced through greater knowledge reform and
regulation.
