I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws—or crafts its advanced treatises—if I can write its economics textbooks

Ainslie had pioneered thinking on what’s known as hyperbolic discounting, a cognitive bias that makes people irrationally prefer tiny rewards now over much bigger rewards later. It’s a simple idea that explains why we have a hard time sticking to diets, quitting smoking, or saving for retirement, and it might be taken as common sense outside of economics: we have problems with delayed gratification.

Although it represents a discipline that values competition and choice, the economics-textbook market has, ironically, long been characterized by monopoly and homogeneity