"In Kenya, many households report a lack of cash as an impediment to investing in preventive health products, such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets. However, by providing people with a lockable metal box, a padlock, and a passbook that a household simply labels with the name of a preventive health product, researchers increased savings, and investment in these products rose by 66–75 percent (Dupas and Robinson 2013)."

This study reshaped my understanding of the fact that easy behavioral interventions, such as providing a lockable box and a passbook, can remarkably improve investment in important health products. In my opinion, this binds to what makes a country rich versus poor because it shows that economic success does not depend on the availability of resources only, but how well policies impact human behavior to improve management of the resources and foster prosperity.

"First, people make most judgments and most choices automatically, not deliberatively: we call this “thinking automatically.” Second, how people act and think often depends on what others around them do and think: we call this “thinking socially.” Third, individuals in a given society share a common perspective on making sense of the world around them and understanding themselves: we call this “thinking with mental models.”"

This quote has prompted a couple questions for me. Firstly, what is the difference between automatic vs deliberate thinking, and how do they affect decision making? Secondly, In what ways do social norms and behaviors shape economic outcomes and development policies? This relates to our guiding question because it suggests that economic disparities might be informed by the way individuals, and societies at large, make decisions.

"The title of this Report, Mind, Society, and Behavior, captures the idea that paying attention to how humans think (the processes of mind) and how history and context shape thinking (the infl uence of society) can improve the design and implementation of development policies and interventions that target human choice and action (behavior). To put it differently, development policy is due for its own redesign based on careful consideration of human factors."

This quote highlights a main idea of the article by underlining the fact that development policies have to take human psychology, social influence, and behavior into account. Failure to do so will leave out the missing link in understanding why some countries are economically successful and others fail (rational vs irrational). That is, if one incorporates the insights of the way human beings think, the societal context in which choices are framed, and behavior that ultimately drives economic outcomes, then he/she is better placed to set policies attuned more closely toward growth and inequalities for the sake of a country's wealth.