(So far, my reading of the history of the Concorde project is that at every critical juncture, the British/French government may have chosen to plod ahead for a variety of reasons that one could label 'foolish'.

In particular, at each juncture in the project's history, did any British/French government official cite sunk costs as a reason for continuing with the project? I am however not an expert on the history of Concorde and am therefore looking for any evidence to the contrary.

My tentative view is thus that the so-called Concorde Fallacy may itself be a fallacy and yet another academic urban legend - an influential academic makes a mistaken assertion that is then picked up, repeated, and converted into gospel over the subsequent years, without anyone bothering to check if it was ever true in the first place. The Government should commit itself whole-heartedly and publicly to Concorde, with a professionally run sales and publicity campaign. The CPRS believes this is a real consideration, if only from the point of view of getting people to work and enjoy it.Īfter reviewing the worst-case and most-likely-case scenarios, the memo recommended on p. (c) Now that the public believes Concorde is a spectacular technological success, cancellation would be a severe, almost emotional, blow to the average man and woman in the United Kingdom. (b) Cancellation in 1972 would destroy 26,000 jobs in the United Kingdom, when unemployment and, possibly, redundancy rates will be high. British withdrawal after that date might seriously hinder co-operation with France. This would do great harm to Anglo- French relations and, before 1 January, 1973, might imperil Ratification. (a) Given President Pompidou's personal commitment, cancellation would have to be precipitated by unilateral British withdrawal. The memo then cited three political arguments against cancellation: The decision whether or not to abandon Concorde must start from where we are now-much of the milk is already spilt. The total liability to the United Kingdom alone could be about £550 million excluding the written off £350 million mentioned above. Concorde will make little money for its manufacturers and precious little, if anything, for the airlines who buy it.

If continued, development and production will cost us at least £475 million more (£392 million present value) from 1971–75. On 30 November, 1971, it had cost the British Government an irrecoverable £350 million. It began:Ĭoncorde is a commercial disaster. Instead, I found this British memo expressing a very clear understanding of the concept of sunk costs and cautioning against falling for the sunk-cost fallacy. However, in my brief investigation, I have been unable to find any for Concorde. (With another less well-known example of the sunk-cost fallacy - the Tenn-Tom Waterway project, I was easily able to find examples of several US government officials committing the sunk-cost fallacy.) I thought it would be very easy to find evidence that some British/French government officials were indeed guilty of the sunk-cost fallacy. Given the huge number of citations, I had myself assumed that Concorde was indeed a 'classic' example of the sunk-cost fallacy that I could cite. In every instance, it is simply asserted without any evidence that the British/French governments egregiously and foolishly fell victim to the sunk-cost fallacy.īut were the British/French governments actually guilty of the sunk-cost fallacy? It’s such a clear case of the sunk-cost fallacy that 'Concorde fallacy' is now a synonym. One of the most egregious examples is the development of the Concorde supersonic transport aircraft at a total cost far in excess of the initial predictions and which was persevered with long after it became clear that there was no hope turning a profit on the venture. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (2013) writes:

Examples: evolutionary biologists - Grafen and Sibly (1978), Dawkins and Brockmann (1980), Curio (1987), Arkes and Ayton (1999) economists - Höffler (2008), Ahlstrom and Bruton (2009), McAfee, Mialon, and Mialon (2010), Baliga and Ely (2011) media and blogs - Forbes (2011), The New Yorker (2013), Tim Taylor (2014), FEE (2015). Thereafter, the Concorde project would be frequently cited as a 'classic' example of the sunk-cost fallacy. I believe Dawkins and Carlisle (1976) were the first to use Concorde as an example of the sunk-cost fallacy, though they did not mention it by name:Ī government which has invested heavily in, for example, a supersonic airliner, is understandably reluctant to abandon it, even when sober judgment of future prospects suggests that it should do so. The sunk-cost fallacy has also been dubbed the Concorde Fallacy.Įxamples of the Concorde Fallacy in the academic literature and beyond

Time sink fallacy