I had serious trouble understanding the paragraph “COUNTERING HYPERBOLIC DISCOUNTING?” beyond “sunk costs probably counter other biases”.
Also, I’d like to point out that, if sunk costs are indeed a significant problem in large organizations, they are indeed a significant problem; large organizations are (unfortunately?) rather important to modern life.
Only if there are better equilibriums which can be moved to by attacking sunk cost—otherwise they are simply the price of doing business.
(I only found two studies bearing on it, neither of which were optimistic: the study finding sunk costs encouraged coordination and the bank study finding attacking sunk cost resulted in deception and falsification of internal metrics.)
I had serious trouble understanding the paragraph “COUNTERING HYPERBOLIC DISCOUNTING?” beyond “sunk costs probably counter other biases”.
Also, I’d like to point out that, if sunk costs are indeed a significant problem in large organizations, they are indeed a significant problem; large organizations are (unfortunately?) rather important to modern life.
What’s not clear about it? That’s the idea.
Only if there are better equilibriums which can be moved to by attacking sunk cost—otherwise they are simply the price of doing business.
(I only found two studies bearing on it, neither of which were optimistic: the study finding sunk costs encouraged coordination and the bank study finding attacking sunk cost resulted in deception and falsification of internal metrics.)