39: A stitch in time

Anticipatory measures, sunk costs, and the endowment effect

‘A stitch in time saves nine’. That was the phrase Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson chose to employ in September 2020 while announcing further pandemic lockdown restrictions. Ironically if he had made that stitch as early as February, we might not still be having conversations about it nearly a year and a half later. A stitch too late is the first…