'Author William Poundstone, an easy-to-read best-selling writer, takes readers through the psychological ploys consumers face each day when they reach into their pockets and purses to pay for goods and services. It attempts to help them answer the big question: how do they know whether they're getting value for money? ... Very readable account of dark arts used to convince consumers they should pay more for everything.'
Piers Akerman, Daily Telegraph
'Bright analysis of the psychology of pricing ... readable and revealing.'
Kirkus Reviews
'Immensely readable and deeply researched.'
New Zealand Listener
'Pricing is often seen as market-driven and rational but this improbably fascinating book reveals all the alarming tricks used to make consumers pay more for less and argues that prices are often entirely unrelated to anything other than the whims and consumer psychology. You'll learn a lot about "anchoring" and you'll never look at a restaurant menu the same way again.'
Sun Herald
Poundstone 'makes complicated economic and psychological concepts palatable by using a numble, colloquial style in refreshingly short chapters . . . Dozens of fascinating topics are explored ... At the end you will be left wondering what money and prices really mean — the dizzying quirky irrational sort of wonder that Alice found in "Wonderland"'
The Denver Post
'Much of behavioral economics ... has focused on the seemingly crazy ways in which people and prices interact. In his new book Priceless, William Poundstone offers a thoroughly accessible and enjoyable tour of this research ... Poundstone is an engaging intellectual historian who traces the development of behavioral economics from its roots in the 1960s discipline called psychophysics, an offshoot of psychology ... It was more than century ago that Oscar Wilde famously observed that "people know the price of everything and the value of nothing". In Priceless, we now have the proof.'
Steven Pearlstine, Washington Post
'Priceless is an instructive and entertaining romp through the hits of recent research on decision making, which will leave you amused, smarter, and wondering about what money and prices really mean.'
Daniel Kahneman, professor emeritus, Princeton University, and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics
'A powerful argument that should be a wake-up call to everyone who still subscribes to the old model of economics.'
Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions
'Poundstone has managed to write a book that is fun to read and yet well-researched and substantive. Without a minute of suffering the reader gets to know nearly all the key contributors to the science of decision making. Recommended for anyone who has to make decisions.'
Richard H. Thaler, coauthor (with Cass R. Sunstein) of Nudge: Improving Decisions on Health, Wealth and Happiness
'The psychology of prices is, to an extent, the psychology of life, and thus the lessons of Priceless are indeed life lessons. Poundstone's lively descriptions of the irrational quirks that characterize our behavior are engaging and enlightening. Take it with you when you're thinking of buying (or selling) something. It might save you a bundle.'
John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences and Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up
'If you can get this book for under $100, grab it! After you read it, you will better understand why the price you paid felt like a bargain.'
Max Bazerman, professor of business administration, Harvard Business School, and coauthor of Judgment in Managerial Decision Making
