Here’s my recommendation for the day: if you want to learn a bit about behavioural economics but the thought scares you, go watch some TED videos by Rory Sutherland. He’s an advertising guru who has delved into this branch of economics, as playing on consumer’s biases something that helps make advertisements successful.

In one of his videos, he talks about how on Korean roads, there is a countdown timer for the red lights, and this decreases incidents of road rage and accidents. The rationale behind this outcome is that by signalling to drivers how much longer they must wait at the light, they are calmer and drive safer.

However, in China where they implemented a countdown timer for green lights, the outcomes were not the same. When people saw that there were 5 seconds left of the green light, instead of rationally breaking at the expectation of the imminent red light, they would floor their cars to try and make the light. This then resultantly caused higher rates of accidents. Not the policy outcome the Chinese Government was aiming for (I assume).

The lesson here is: just because a certain idea works in one instance, does not mean you will get the same outcomes if you change the factors. Perhaps Chinese drivers are taught differently to Korean drivers, or perhaps the definitive difference was that red lights are not green lights.