Member-only story
An accidental behavioural economist is on holiday — again
Human behaviour continues to be an inexhaustible source of wonder and fascination — even when on holiday
Unexpectedly, your correspondent had an opportunity to return to his native country at short notice for a brief holiday after skipping the annual tradition last year. And yet again, it provided ample educational entertainment (or entertaining education) for any behavioural economist, accidental or not. Take a seat, and prepare for some anecdotes.
International travel has become a bit more complicated since the beginning of 2020. One of the first tasks — other than booking the ferry crossing between the UK and France — was to figure out what hoops we’d need to jump through to get to our destination. Thanks to constant mentions in the British media, we knew we’d need an antigen test before travelling back home and a PCR test upon return, and those were quickly arranged. The conditions to travel to (or in our case, through) France had recently been relaxed from “Don’t even think about it” to “Vaccinated? Do come in!”, albeit with a declaration sur l’honneur that we didn’t have a fever, had not been close to a sick person etc. Easy peasy!
