This is an interesting book to read, with some decent ideas on how things come to happen, It reads a little dry at times but overall it is worth the time spent and does make one think of a differnet approach to persuasion and public influence.

What I expected were interesting perspectives on a series of examples that would illustrate various aspects of their thesis. The examples would start off with promise, but the authors nattered on until it was just too irritating. I would then jump to the next example - either immediately or when I next picked up the book - but each one failed in the same way.

I still can't explain how such interesting topics were rendered so trite.

Before I get to the book review, note that Thaler has done an excellent 1-hour talk about this book for Authors@Google, which is well worth your time whether or not you actually read Nudge. It's much better than the videos on Amazon.

The book. Thaler & Sunstein define their use of the word "nudge" on page 6: "A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predicable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting the fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food does not." The authors then go on, in the first part of the book (roughly 100 pages) to give examples of situations in which nudges can and should be used. Some of the examples are trivial: people eat 53% more old and stale popcorn if you serve it in a big bucket (the popcorn was stale enough that it squeaked when chewed). But many of the examples are significant, and concern people's persistent inability to make good decisions (as defined by themselves) in areas like eating and saving.

Part II of the book (roughly 55 pages) has 4 chapters focused specifically on money. The first of these chapters discusses a program of theirs called "Save More Tomorrow" in which employees can fill out a form to increase their retirement savings in sync with future pay rises. In the example the authors give, those in the program went from a savings rate of 3.5% to 13.6% in under four years. This quadrupling was achieved with nothing more than a nudge. The other three chapters in this part are about: the naivite of many people (even nobel prize winning economists) in making their investment decisions, credit cards and credit generally, and a brief case study of the Swedish social security privitization.

Part III ("Health", 40 pages) has three chapters. The first is about the well-intentioned but badly-designed medicare "Part D" prescription drug program in the US; this will not be very interesting to non-Americans. Next is an 8-page chapter on using nudges to increase organ donation (by changing the default to donation and requiring the person to opt-out). The third Health chapter, somewhat oddly, is about the environment, and Thaler & Sunstein present some examples of nudges, such as an orb that glows red when you use a lot of electricity, which can help people to be more energy efficient. To me, it seems that the world's environmental problems are unlikely to be solved by mere nudges, but I guess they won't actually hurt.

Part IV ("Freedom" 30 pages) is a bit of a misfit. It has three chapters, the first of which is about school vouchers, the second of which advocates a change in the law which would allow patients to sign away their ability to sue doctors for medical malpractice, and the third advocates a redefinition of government involvement in sanctioning marriage. These three together read like general interest libertarian essays, strangely disconnected from the rest of the book. They're good, but a reader could skip them without losing the thread of the book.

Finally, there is Part V ("Extensions and Objections", 25 pages). Every book of serious nonfiction should contain something like Nudge's Part V. Thaler & Sunstein address criticisms of their positions in a serious and thoughtful manner. My impression is that the authors are really putting up the most serious objections that they've faced at seminars and talks, rather than mere straw man arguments. There's no point in my describing these in this review, but I think that the existence of this part says good things about the intellectual tone of the book, and I enthusiastically recommend it.

If you've never hear of "choice architecture," it isn't because you haven't experienced it. From your 401(k) enrollment form to the location of food at the company cafeteria (heck, even the menu design), every choice you make (or don't make) results partly from a decision someone else (the choice architect) has made for you. Even while I was still reading Nudge, I found new ways of viewing day-to-day activities which have created both new opportunities and interesting challenges for me personally and professionally.

Nudge is the rare book that keeps you thinking after you read it. Rarer still for a book that is inherently academic. But, with its real world examples, Thaler and Sunstein bring libertarian paternalism to life. Wouldn't it be a hoot of those who could take advantage actually did so? I know I am going to try.

Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck: A Conversation About Income, Wealth, and the Steps in Between (Total Candor)

The idea that good government -- effective, productive, protective -- is possible, and even desireable, seems to drive libertarians and certain conservatives up the wall. It may have something to do with an overweening devotion to liberty, but I think it might have most to do with the fact that some people profit from the mistakes of others, and anti-governmental types want more individual profit. They enjoy the chaos and competition of an unfettered marketplace, which is particularly beneficial to those who depend on investments rather than a salary.

But when we consider the damage done to our society over the past eight years by a government that doesn't intervene when health and safety and livelihoods are at stake, we realize that liberty must be limited to some extent. The authors of this book are not necessarily suggesting we limit liberty, yet their critics have wasted no time decrying their liberal pedigrees and accusing them of promoting governmental intrusion into spheres of life that should remain private.

The authors are simply showing that when governments and companies help citizens and employees make better decision, when taxpayer dollars and corporate profits are channeled into such programs, everyone benefits, just as families do when parents present better choices to their children. I realize this statement will trigger another howl from libertarian conservatives about political elitists and do-gooders and the infantilization of our culture, but these generalizations are both selfish and cynical. Even good people need help at times, and we are morally bound to help them whether or not you may wish to.

The authors' detailed examples and reasoning provide excellent arguments for the kind of government we need. I hope everyone will read this useful, positive, and important book.

The book is full of warm and fuzzy utter nonsense. Such as: If you make the vegetables easier to get to, and the junk food more difficult to reach in the school lunch line, the kids will switch to vegetables. That's BS. The average kid will go for the Twinkies and milk shakes no matter how difficult they are to get to.

Nutshell review - The book covers Libertarian Paternalism, how to help people be free in their choices and, at the same time, help them make better and more informed ones. A very insightful and informative book about human nature, human behaviour and into ways in which we can improve our decision making processes.

The book initially starts out very interesting in its theory. Once it starts moving on into its sections on how their theory could improve the different parts of our lives, to include money, health, and education, it just becomes very dull. For example, they go in depth into how to improve social security using in depth examples, when they could have gotten to the point. I beleive most of the book was written to fill enough pages to publish. The attempts at humor in this book are all directed at "econs", and is not quite as entertaining to the rest of us as it is to the authors. The stars are given only because of the first part of the book,which explains choice architecture. The rest of the book is given a one star, it was not worth reading beyond part 1.

Well, humans are not as intelligent as we think. The first segment of this charming book is about experiments that make it clear we just don't think lots of the time. Of course, there are times when we can't have all the information necessary to make a good choice. So the point of the book is how "choice architects" can "nudge" people to make choices that are in their best interest. The book is very readable, it has a casual style that makes economics much less intimidating than it usually is. But it certainly provides a dose of self-awareness most of us probably will be embarrassed about - a smiley face can affect adult behavior!

The fashionable ideas of behaviourial economists like this are elitist rubbish. Who decides what "positive social norms" people need to be nudged toward? Those same would-be decision makers are just as fallible, lazy, stupid, greedy, weak, loss-averse, stubborn, and prone to inertia and conformism (and poor decision-makers) as the people to be nudged.

In this lovely, useful book, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein examine choices, biases and the limits of human reasoning from a variety of perspectives. They often amuse by disclosing how they have fallen victim to the limitations of thought that they are describing. The fact that these educated, articulate professionals can fool themselves so often demonstrates how tough it is to think clearly, a point the authors emphasize and even repeat. Humans fall prey to systematic errors of judgment, but you can harness this problematic tendency productively, including by helping others make better decisions. Some of the authors' suggestions may not be practical, but many are and all are interesting. getAbstract recommends this book to anyone who wants to know how to shape responsible decisions.

Behavioural economics has rapidly become popularised and a couple of titles have made the best seller list, but if you read only one or two this should be on your list. What makes this different is that the authors come up with policy options which could significantly improve public policy choices and save our taxes.

With the widely recognized academic reputation of Thaler, I would have expected a far more creative book that covers new territory. I only made it half way through and put it down because it wasn't telling me anything new. This book largely reframes what has been written by several other authors.

so yeah i did what they said on pg 17-18 and measured the dimensions of the tabletop diagrams. the two tabletops on pg 17 measure 5.25mm by 2.5mm and 5.5mm by 2.2mm respectively. A smaller difference that the naked eye suggests, but a difference nonetheless. Then on pg 18 we're presented with a different diagram of two identical tabletops, 2.4mm by 5.4mm (or thereabouts, the sides aren't all even in any of the diagrams) and told these tabletops have the same dimensions as those on pg 17, thus proving they were identical all along. wtf?

I agree with other reviewers that the topic, though interesting, does not warrant book-length treatment.

I also think the authors fudge the definition of "nudge." For instance, in the last section of "12 nudges," they mention Automatic Tax Returns for those who don't itemize deductions. Purportedly, such automatic filing will save tax filers millions of hours of time a year. Probably a good idea, but how is making something automatic, in effect reducing choice, a libertarian nudge? And really, how is it different now from the current choice architecture, in which filing is mandated anyway? Similarly, while I enjoyed the idea of separating "marriage" and "civil union" and I think it might make good public policy, I don't really see how it fits into the idea of "nudging." This complaint goes hand in hand with my first one, which is that, in order to come up with enough material to make a book, they had to really stretch on some of the nudges.

Finally, and maybe I'm being nit-picky, but I was driven crazy by the amount of parenthetical phrases. It seems, especially in the first half, that every other sentence had something or other in parentheses, most of which in my opinion either could be removed or didn't belong in parentheses in the first place. It really made parts hard to read.

The book is very well written, has some excellent points and is in generel very informative. The one thing dragging this book down is the distribution of subjects it covers.

More than 60% of the book, concerns itself with current political topics in the US, and how they could be handled better by using "nudges" and decision architecture. This has 2 major side-effects, 1. It's mostly irrelevant for non-US citizens, 2. In 5 years time, it will also be irrelevant for US citizens, since they problems mentioned are very specific and will most likely no longer be relevant.

The remains of the book is split something like this:
10% What is a nudge (as well as the Econs Vs. Humans)
5% What is liberal paternalism
20% Defense of liberal paternalism against critics
>5% How do you nudge people.

I highly recommend reading the first 100 pages or so, sadly the remaining 200 pages are mostly filler.

According to the authors, man is not the hard, cold rationalist, or economic man, who is often described in free market postulations, but is instead quite fallible, even the highly-educated. The thinking and perceptions of man are constantly being waylaid by subtle influences which result in bad choices. The authors propose "libertarian paternalism," a catchall term for the subtle persuasion of people to make decisions that are helpful to them. However, if one examines our economic system, the authors' fears that their paternalism is freedom stifling pale next to the realities of consumer manipulation by large economic entities.

The first section of the book describing the various influences on erroneous thinking are fairly basic, much of it demonstrated in psychological experimentation. Unfortunately, life is a good bit more complicated than merely making so-called correct decisions about trivial or contrived matters. There are many areas in our lives where powerful institutions have created a situation where there are no good choices for most of us.

Take retirement savings, 401k plans, and investment decisions. Workers did not choose for corporations to abandon defined benefit plans and put the onus on workers to save for retirement. Many workers don't contribute to 401k plans because they have insufficient income - not that they cannot make a decision, a fundamental fact not mentioned by the authors. It is simply disingenuous to criticize workers for the performance of mutual funds in today's stock markets, for their investment "choices." Stock markets have been captured by financial elites who use others' investments as money to play with. The ordinary 401k contributor absolutely does not have the tools or the means to manage their investments on a minute-by-minute basis aided by sophisticated computer software.

The idea that parents don't correctly choose a good school for their children is absurd. Let's say in a school district of 100,000 students that there are five good schools with total enrollment of 10,000. Of course, all parents want their children to go to those five schools, or could easily be so persuaded - an obvious impossibility. This is a problem of poor schools, not a failure of parents to choose. Or take the new Part D of Medicare, the Prescription Drug Plan - this plan was designed by insurance companies to be completely incomprehensible with all kinds of loopholes where benefits do not have to be paid. Do the authors really want to use this as an example of choice failure? This is a scam that has been perpetrated on the American public.

On the surface, there can hardly be anything wrong with the idea of improving choices; who advocates making poor choices. However, let's consider our environment. We live in a capitalistic economy - profits are virtually all that matter. Giving good information to people is not a priority; in fact, it could be argued that giving disinformation is, especially if it positively affects the bottom line. What is advertising? It is disingenuous to write a book about poor choices without situating those choices. There are many powerful players who are successful because they count on poor choices and ensure that those choices continue. That is the book that needs to be written.

If and when we ever empower the citizens of this nation to control the nature of our institutions, then criticize the result and the choices. Now the choices we have are not really choices.

while the ideas behind this book are interesting, they do not warrant a book-length examination. good for the authors for being libertarian--it is mentioned relentlessly throughout the manuscript--and good for them for figuring out the whole choice architecture thing and coining such a pop term. but everyone participates in choice architecture when they make decisions, whether they realize it or not. does it matter if people know that they are doing it and that it has a name? i doubt it.

i did like the idea of separating "marriage" and "civil union"--all 6-8 pages of it-- and that was interesting. overall this would have made for a great nation or new criterion article, but not a book. skip it the book, read the reviews here (some of which are more enlightening than the book itself) and re-read freakonomics instead.

As of yesterday's mail, July 15th, I still had not received the book! Unbelievable!

Hugh Schwartz

The subject matter is good but like so many books of this type, it would have been a much better read at 1/3 its length.

This book provides insights to those who need to move people to make good decisions and if they cannot, then the default would do them the least harm. Many of the examples that they have provided are not new, e.g. Singapore has adopted the opt-out model for organ donation years ago. The idea on privatising marriage by the authors is an interesting one.

A book as progressively forward thinking as this appears to be, ought to be priced in line with the Kindle standard pricing "theory". Perhaps the $15.44 marker is merely one giant "paternalistic libertarian" choice-architecture experiment? I wonder. . . .

Milton Friedman famously wrote that economic models should be judged by their ability to predict and explain, not the realism of their assumptions. Neoclassical microeconomics has long used that argument to defend itself from criticisms of its unrealistic assumptions. But Thaler, Sunstein and many others are amassing a large body of evidence that shows, in many important cases, that neoclassical microeconomics does not predict very well. In so doing, they are liberating economics from the straitjacket of outdated psychology.

In addition to economists, policy wonks should read the book for its clever, "libertarian paternalism" approach to policy that transcends the tired left-right dichotomy. Thaler and Sunstein present many VERY low-cost ideas that could result in major improvements in people's lives.

Heterodox economists of the old-institutionalist variety should also read the book, as it provides evidence for things like the power of emulation and inertia.

Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge is best read as a list of examples of and general principles for developing choice architecture in order to improve outcomes. It can provide an understanding of the pros can cons of opt-out, opt-in, forced choices, random selection, and default preferences.


This book was sold to me as something more than that, and the authors continuously repeat their "libertarian paternalism" catch phrase. Simply put, there's very little that could be called libertarian about this book. School choice is a possible exception, but kids always complicate patterns.

To quote the video of the authors on the book's amazon page, "this book is not so much about whether we should have big or small government." The primary failing is that while government programs may be improved through choice architecture, there will always be force involved to the extent that government is making decisions. Reducing the size of the government budget is by default a way to increase liberty, and their refusal to acknowledge that makes their "libertarian paternalism" mantra ring hollow.

The most interesting fact I learned from this book is that the social security website has operating hours.

A very interesting and entertaining book on human behavior and the choices we make to live our lives. Another book, I recommend that takes a look at men's human behavior and choices they make about living their lives is Why Men Die Before Women and How to Prevent It. Replete with personal experiences and exercises,Mr Scaglione and Dr Shore make an excellent arguement on changing choices and how to do it to live a higher quality and longer life.

I'm not an economist and I rarely read non-fiction, but this is an excellent book. The authors' insights seem just like common sense -- except no one really thought of it before. Treat yourself to a good and educational read.

I found this book to provide an interesting perspective into human behavior. The authors make a good case for Libertarian Paternalism. The book is well written and accessible to a wide audience.

I liked the book. It was interesting and well written...not extremely addicting, but enjoyable.

"Nudge" explains that you can help unsophisticated citizens make safer, healthier, and wiser public policy choices through the use of an influence tactic the book labels as, "choice architecture." Through the artful selection, wording, and sequencing of choices, unsophisticated people can be lead to pick options that are smarter.

The authors believe that choice architecture can produce large and significant changes in the behavior of unsophisticates and offer carefully cited studies that support this assertion. In other words, choice architecture works well in the real world.

Thinking inferentially and assuming the assertions of the book are true, if you read this book you are sophisticated. And probably are largely immune to the subtle, but large and irresistable effects of choice architecture.

Wow.

The Tversy & Kahneman & Thaler-type psychological claims about systematic mistakes are a lot more controversial than Thaler and Sunstein let on. I do have a question though: if people make all these mistakes in their decision making processes, why do we trust them to elect the right people who can figure out the right things to advise people to do? Won't these biases end up with politicians who have the same misconceptions as the voters?

The book would be a lot more honest if it were to clearly state the objections to these psychological claims and try to refute them. What is presented instead is a bunch of strawman objections. Do people really overestimate their chances of success? Or is it that the experiments upon which these claims are made flawed? For example, take Thaler's old experiment about students in his classes overestimating their grades in his class. He claims that the students have been assured that he won't know their identities, but even if there is only a couple percent probably that the teacher will know who you are, why would you say that you think that you are going to fail the class? What is the pay off for giving an accurate prediction.

Using government to "nudge" people in the right direction through controlling the information that they receive is problematic, even if to a less extent than using government regulations. I have no reason to believe that the government indoctrination is going to be any more accurate than the indoctrination that goes on in schools regarding global warming. I have no reason to believe that this is going to be any more accurate than government regulations.

My dictionary tells me that "nudge," which rhymes with "judge" and means a gentle push, is probably of Norwegian origin. The authors are careful to distinguish this from the Yiddishism "noodge," meaning pest or bore (@4). So maybe a bakkel, which is what they call doughnuts in Norway, would be a more appropriate analogy for this book than a bagel. But either way, the book is missing something at its core. And it is not as much of a departure from the Chicago School worldview as some reviews would have you believe.

1. Richard Thaler (RT) and Cass Sunstein (CS) base their recommendations on the experimental studies of A. Tversky, D. Kahneman and, among others, RT himself. As developed during the past three decades or so, these have led to the field of "behavioral economics" (and a Nobel Prize for Kahneman). The gist is that people have certain "irrational" ways of looking at the world that lead them to act differently from the way most economists assume for their convenience of their theories. By "nudge" they mean a design element in a thing or in a process that anticipates these psychological tendencies, and steers people toward behavior that, ideally, helps them without limiting their freedom.

Many of the principles and techniques they describe (which other reviewers on this page summarize) have been known and exploited for far longer than there were fancy names for them. Retailers have set at prices $9.98 rather than $10.00 since time immemorial, relying on "availability". The wisdom of writing contracts and designing business processes with "idiot-proof" procedures (the term I was taught decades ago, in lieu of "nudge") is similarly ancient, at least within better law firms and companies. So RTCS's notion that nudges could be used more often when designing social policy shouldn't be very controversial. And on their face, many of their analyses make sense.

2. RTCS do skate on thin ice near the end, when they make it explicit that they're relying on "the invisible hand" of markets to make their proposals work (e.g., @239-240) - a hand whose existence, or at least invisibility, is controversial. They're also on shaky ground when they suggest that John Rawls's "publicity principle" should be a constraint on nudges "in both the public and private sectors" (@244-245). This principle states that governments shouldn't select policies that they wouldn't be willing or able to defend publicly to their own citizens. RTCS don't spell out, though, the scope of this principle in the private sector. Should the analogue of "citizen" be shareholder, or indeed all citizens? If the latter, what's the source of this duty? If to shareholders only, where does that leave the rest of us?

3. But those are details. The deeper problem is what's missing from the big picture of this book. Namely: society.

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." So said Margaret Thatcher, and though RTCS don't quote her, they seem to share this view. Everything in this book is focused on decisions made by individuals (called "Humans" by RTCS) for their own good or ill, and based on their own preferences. The only other entity is a "Planner", such as a legislature, bureaucracy, judiciary or corporate management. Its relationship to individuals is top-down. Moreover, the Planner's own psychological quirks are rarely discussed. In effect, the "homo economicus"-type of rationality that behavioral economics denies to Humans is shifted up one level to the Planner.

The idea that people might act together to influence the Planner, select the Planner, communicate their will to the Planner, or rebel against the Planner is totally missing from this book (aside from a passing reference in a footnote (@238). This is very much in line with Robert Reich's observation in "Supercapitalism" (2007) that collective action and debate in American democracy has been replaced by an atomistic consumerism affecting all aspects of life, including politics.

The worldview expressed in "Nudge" is a far cry from the idea of "active liberty" described by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in his book of that name (2005). Democratic participation in lawmaking is central to Breyer's view, and policy decisions should be based on facilitating that participation. OTOH, in their footnote, RTCS make the conjunction of good laws and popular will sound like an occasional happy accident: "Social practices, and the laws that reflect them, often persist not because they are wise but because Humans, often suffering from self-control problems, are simply following other Humans. ... We do not mean here to question the view that laws that really do embody the judgments of many people often deserve support for that reason" (@238n). Of course one can think of examples where what RTCS say here is right; slavery, for example. But many other cases are less clear-cut (not that RTCS even express any opinion on the slavery issue or the "wisdom" of any other human rights). This footnote embodies the entire discussion of democracy you'll find in this book. RTCS don't even specify who those "many people" might be -- "Planners" perhaps?

4. A corollary of RTCS's ignoring society is that they have no sensitivity to culture (notwithstanding numerous references to TV shows). This is most obvious in their chapters on organ donations (Ch. 11) and marriage (Ch. 15). The idea of a market for the purchase and sale of human organs "has obvious merit, [but] it is also spectacularly unpopular for reasons that are not well understood" (@175). Maybe the reason is that peoples' cultural beliefs lead them to find the idea of such a market repugnant?

Or how about RTCS's proposal that the institution of marriage be left to private religious groups, with government providing only the institution of civil union - for everyone. They don't consider the idea that a nation's laws should express the cultural values of its people. Nor do they consider whether civil unions would be accepted without stigma in society - or even within families. Since many inter-faith marriages wouldn't be recognized under the laws of any specific religion, do RTCS expect people to shop around for a more convenient religion, or give up religion altogether? Maybe someday people will come around to RTCS's ultra-rational view (which may also be tinted by the apparently divorced status of at least one of them), but we're a long way from it. They need to deal with that.

One more thing about culture: RTCS assert that Tversy & Kahneman-type psychological tendencies arise from brain function (@19), and throughout the book they use the word "Human" to describe people who display those tendencies. I'm not an expert in this area of research, but it isn't clear how much of it has relied on subjects from non-Western cultures. Previous multi-cultural studies in behavioral economics, such as "Foundations of Human Sociality" edited by J. Heinrich & al. (2004), show considerable variation across cultures. So the details of "choice architecture" may be far more culturally-specific, and less scientifically grounded, than RTCS acknowledge. Certainly the book's point of departure, how to engineer behavior on the basis of individual preferences to behaviors, is very American. It would be quite alien to many books on social policy from France, Germany or Japan, for example. BTW playing this scientistic rhetorical trump card in matters of policy is a hallmark of the Chicago School. See, e.g., James Hackney Jr.'s "Under Cover of Science" (2007), which, despite not being enitrely convincing about the historical reasons for this rhetorical trope, is entirely correct in identifying it.

5. CS was close with the Clinton Administration, and an early supporter of Obama. He's probably on the short list for a Federal judgeship - even to fill a Supreme Court vacancy - next time the Democrats take the White House. Before reading this book, I'd have welcomed such an appointment. Now, I'd be much more cautious to do so. America is a society in addition to being a group of individuals. And that society is the source of any "Planner's" authority. I hesitate to give such authority to anyone who forgets where it comes from, and forgets the values that underlie it. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the authors of "Nudge" appear to have forgotten.

My dictionary tells me that "nudge," which rhymes with "judge" and means a gentle push, is probably of Norwegian origin. The authors are careful to distinguish this from the Yiddishism "noodge," meaning pest or bore (@4). So maybe a bakkel, which is what they call doughnuts in Norway, would be a more appropriate analogy for this book than a bagel. But either way, the book is missing something at its core.

1. Richard Thaler (RT) and Cass Sunstein (CS) base their recommendations on the experimental studies of A. Tversky, D. Kahneman and, among others, RT himself. As developed during the past three decades or so, these have led to the field of "behavioral economics" (and a Nobel Prize for Kahneman). The gist is that people have certain "irrational" ways of looking at the world that lead them to act differently from the way most economists assume for their convenience of their theories. By "nudge" they mean a design element in a thing or in a process that anticipates these psychological tendencies, and steers people toward behavior that, ideally, helps them without limiting their freedom.

Many of the principles and techniques they describe (which other reviewers on this page summarize) have been known and exploited for far longer than there were fancy names for them. Retailers have set at prices $9.98 rather than $10.00 since time immemorial, relying on "availability". The wisdom of writing contracts and designing business processes with "idiot-proof" procedures (the term I was taught decades ago, in lieu of "nudge") is similarly ancient, at least within better law firms and companies. So RTCS's notion that nudges could be used more often when designing social policy shouldn't be very controversial. And on their face, many of their analyses make sense.

2. RTCS do skate on thin ice near the end, when they make it explicit that they're relying on "the invisible hand" of markets to make their proposals work (e.g., @239-240) - a hand whose existence, or at least invisibility, is controversial. They're also on shaky ground when they suggest that John Rawls's "publicity principle" should be a constraint on nudges "in both the public and private sectors" (@244-245). This principle states that governments shouldn't select policies that they wouldn't be willing or able to defend publicly to their own citizens. RTCS don't spell out, though, the scope of this principle in the private sector. Should the analogue of "citizen" be shareholder, or indeed all citizens? If the latter, what's the source of this duty? If to shareholders only, where does that leave the rest of us?

3. But those are details. The deeper problem is what's missing from the big picture of this book. Namely: society.

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." So said Margaret Thatcher, and though RTCS don't quote her, they seem to share this view. Everything in this book is focused on decisions made by individuals (called "Humans" by RTCS) for their own good or ill, and based on their own preferences. The only other entity is a "Planner", such as a legislature, bureaucracy, judiciary or corporate management. Its relationship to individuals is top-down. Moreover, the Planner's own psychological quirks are rarely discussed. In effect, the "homo economicus"-type of rationality that behavioral economics denies to Humans is shifted up one level to the Planner.

The idea that people might act together to influence the Planner, to select the Planner, or communicate their will to the Planner, or rebel against the Planner is totally missing from this book. This is very much in line with Robert Reich's observation in "Supercapitalism" (2007) that collective action and debate in American democracy has been replaced by an atomistic consumerism affecting all aspects of life, including politics. The worldview expressed in "Nudge" is a far cry from the idea of "active liberty" described by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in his book of that name (2005). Democratic participation in lawmaking is central to Breyer's view, and policy decisions should be based on facilitating that participation. RTCS might say that the subject of democracy lies outside the scope of their book, but you can't escape such issues in any public "choice architecture" process.

4. A corollary of RTCS's ignoring society is that they have no sensitivity to culture (notwithstanding numerous references to TV shows). This is most obvious in their chapters on organ donations (Ch. 11) and marriage (Ch. 15). The idea of a market for the purchase and sale of human organs "has obvious merit, [but] it is also spectacularly unpopular for reasons that are not well understood" (@175). Maybe the reason is that peoples' cultural beliefs lead them to find the idea of such a market repugnant?

Or how about RTCS's proposal that the institution of marriage be left to private religious groups, with government providing only the institution of civil union - for everyone. They don't consider the idea that a nation's laws should express the cultural values of its people. Nor do they consider whether civil unions would be accepted without stigma in society - or even within families. Since many inter-faith marriages wouldn't be recognized under the laws of any specific religion, do RTCS expect people to shop around for a more convenient religion, or give up religion altogether? Maybe someday people will come around to RTCS's ultra-rational view (which may also be tinted by the apparently divorced status of at least one of them), but we're a long way from it. They need to deal with that.

One more thing about culture: RTCS assert that Tversy & Kahneman-type psychological tendencies arise from brain function (@19), and throughout the book they use the word "Human" to describe people who display those tendencies. I'm not an expert in this area of research, but it isn't clear how much of it has relied on subjects from non-Western cultures. Previous multi-cultural studies in behavioral economics, such as "Foundations of Human Sociality" edited by J. Heinrich & al. (2004), show considerable variation across cultures. So the details of "choice architecture" may be far more culturally-specific. and less scientific, than RTCS acknowledge. Certainly the book's point of departure, how to engineer behavior on the basis of individual preferences to behaviors, is very American. It would be quite alien to many books on social policy from France, Germany or Japan, for example.

5. CS was close with the Clinton Administration, and an early supporter of Obama. He's probably on the short list for a Federal judgeship - even to fill a Supreme Court vacancy - next time the Democrats take the White House. Before reading this book, I'd have welcomed such an appointment. Now, I'd be much more cautious to do so. America is a society in addition to being a group of individuals. And that society is the source of any "Planner's" authority. I hesitate to give such authority to anyone who forgets where it comes from, and forgets the values that underlie it. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the authors of "Nudge" appear to have forgotten.

Richard Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago School of Business, is one of the founders of modern behavioral economics, along with economists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Cass Sunstein is a legal scholar and political science professor at the University of Chicago, and has been at the forefront of applying the results of experimental economics to social problems, especially in the field of law.

This book has one Big Idea, and it is a very important one. The idea is called "status quo bias," meaning that in many choice situations, people value the status quo (what they currently have), and will forgo the opportunity to switch to an alternative unless the alternative is significantly more attractive than the status quo. In situations where it is difficult to evaluate the exact benefits and costs of what one has over what one could only obtain with some conscious effort, people will tend to stick with what they have.

For example, in the United States, the default condition with respect to organ donation is "no donation," so if people want to donate their organs upon death, they must explicitly state this preference. In France, the default condition is "donation," and an individual who does not like this default condition must expressly indicate a desire not to donate. Consequently, the rate of organ donation is France is several times higher than it is in the United states.

The idea behind Nudge is that the choice of a default condition can both allow individuals to choose as they please in a democratic, market society, while at the same time improving social outcomes by providing default conditions that lead to socially useful choices. Thaler and Sunstein call this "libertarian paternalism." While one might think that this minimal sort of market intervention can have only a limited impact on social outcomes, the organ donation example suggests otherwise. Perhaps the most important policy of this type would be a mandate that employers make contributions to retirement savings, in the form of 401(k) and other plans be the default, so that individuals who do not wish to save would have to register the desire to opt out of the plans. A related ideas developed in the book is that employees commit to saving a certain fraction of future raises they are awarded by employers, the idea being that it people do not want to reduce their "status quo" income in order to save, but they may be willing to accept a lower new "status quo" when the status quo changes. This is a very sensible idea.

A second sort of libertarian paternalism takes the form of having the government require firms reveal with clarity and salience the full terms of contractual agreement with consumers. For instance, the nutritional content of restaurant food might be required on the menu, or the precise interest rate on a mortgage might be required to be posted, or all the charges of a broker might be required to be itemized on a monthly statement. These measures are "paternalistic," because if consumers were fully aware of the situation, they might demand this information from firms, and market competition would then lead to compliance. The role of the government in this situation would then be the more traditional one of enforcing "truth in advertizing"---firms are not allowed to misrepresent their offerings.

Libertarian paternalism, of course, is not a panacea, and will not replace the price system as the central mechanism for allocating goods and services, and will not obviate the need for legislation that corrects market failures, such as the tendency for excessive energy use to undermine the natural environment, and perhaps even partially offsets such "human frailties" as the tendency towards undersaving and abusing illegal substances. However, libertarian paternalism is attractive as a first line of attack on even these problems, and should be part of the policy-maker's toolkit.

Fascinating examples illuminate a fascinating concept: that we can be "choice architects" structuring our environments so that our natural biases and heuristics lead to better choices and outcomes. Some of the examples are mundane and familiar--such as putting healthy food in a more convenient location than junk food--but the authors quickly move into exploring more novel, unexpected, and compelling possibilities. My only complaint is that the second half of the book couldn't compete with the first half.

Thaler and Sunstein pulled off something fairly rare and valuable in this book; they offered up a social/political idea that isn't currently being offered up by either the Republicans or the Democrats, but is still politically viable for either party. That's a good thing, because it can be easy to forget that the Democrats and Republicans aren't the only sources of political, social and economic ideas out there.

The authors label themselves as Libertarian Paternalists, two terms that would not normally go together. Libertarians tend to want very small government with a high degree of freedom for citizens, while paternalists tend to think the government should show citizens the right way to do things even at the expense of their freedoms.

Thaler and Sunstein marry the two ideas, saying that governments should not limit peoples' options, but should offer guidance in certain decision-making scenarios. Those decisions would be the ones that are complex for lay-people to make (like prescription drug plan options) or have many options (like choosing a manager for your retirement investments). While the authors do not want to reduce the number of options available or make the decision for anyone (libertarian), they do want to provide well-researched default options and/or forms of encouragement they call nudges to get people headed in a sensible direction (paternalism).

They give a small-stakes example of arranging the food choices in a school cafeteria so that the healthiest options are positioned at eye level at the beginning of the line so they are chosen more frequently (this apparently does really work). They don't want to take away the less healthy options, but neither do they heed the call to stay completely uninvolved. It's a hard philosophy to fault from either side of the political aisle and seems promising for implementation on a number of troubling political fronts we face right now.

Highly recommended for people who like new ideas and are curious to hear about something that isn't being talked up by either of our two major political parties right now.

The authors make some good points about "choice" architecture. Their Libertarian Paternalism might also be referred to as the "Power of Default Choices."

It was worth the money and time to read the book.

The sub title of the book "Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness" should have been a hint at what the book was really about which is "choice architecture" a way to further "libertarian paternalism" meaning that if choices are presented to you in a certain way, you'll make better choices and it'll seem like you're making the choice of your own free will instead of being "nudged" into making the "right" choice.

I'm a big fan of learning why we make the types of choices we make and possibly how to influence those choices. I'm also a big fan of learning how to make better choices for myself.

This book, however, leans heavily to the public policy side of things like how to get people to choose more wisely for retirement savings and the like. It really isn't about Health, Wealth and Happiness. It's about creating systems to "nudge" people into making choices they might not otherwise make.

Well-written and good mix of economics and psychology and practical/every-day issues, but a little obvious at points

This is a fascinating book. It is well-written, and offers a lot of information about Behavioral Economics, with many interesting examples.

If I can read this book and am not internally conflicted at times, that should scare you (as it may indicate that I think my preferences are always best); however, the book's premise is so valid that the concept must be not only fleshed out in detail, but it must be implemented in some fashion (as the book points out, it cannot not be implemented). The good news is that I was internally conflicted (over which option towards which one should nudge another) and I think most readers will be as well.

The opening story of the school cafeteria sets the stage well and makes the premise clear: people make choices and the way we structure those choices influences the choices they make whether we intend to influence them or not. In light of this, why not choose to influence people to make good choices?

The difficulty is in determining what the good choices are. The book argues that the good choices are those that the people would make for themselves if they had all the best information. However, one still has to ask how one can trust the government to provide all the best information and to even use that with integrity to help people make good choices. It is a difficult dilemma - particularly in modern America where there is such distrust for government.

At the same time, I would certainly rather the school cook place the healthy foods where my child is most likely to choose them than to place the unhealthy foods there. That is a pretty clear decision; however, how does one decide on issues like health insurance and savings. The book suggests that we should make individuals "work" to opt-out of insurance or savings rather than to "work" to opt-in. The point is that people are more likely to have health insurance if the default, with a new job, is that it is taken out of their pay. Additionally, people are more likely to invest in a 401k if the default is that it is taken out of their pay and, unless they make a decision to do otherwise (presumably at the time of hire), it will continue to be.

This seems like a good practice until you realize that the company is defaulting to taking money from the employee and using it for the "employee's good". I can certainly see a time period of struggle where employees may be suing their employers for taking their money without their "explicit permission". That is that since it was a default and not a granting of permission it could be problematic. I supposed time and courts will tell.

This is a tremendous book that brings an important topic to the forefront. Do we need to consciously help people make "better" decisions or can we allow them to make "mistakes" and learn or not learn from those? It does seem to have implications on free will, but at the same time so does doing nothing. This, I'm sure, will become an excellent debate in the coming decades.

Nudge is a wonderful book that disconfirms expectancies. It is a form of Ashtanga or power yoga for the brain--with benefits that extend beyond the last page. Humourous and seductive in its conversational style, it provides a compact history of research on human behavior before moving along to its proposals for improving decisionmaking and results. As a mental workout, it is enjoyable as well as rewarding. While reading this book, my reflective self kept asking, "Am I really reading something that is teaching me something? It's too much fun for me to actually be learning valuable stuff." Then, I would stop all of the internal discussion and get back to reading.

To mangle the words of my yoga teacher, "Sometimes, the heart arrives before the head does." In the future, when neuro-scientists get around to analyzing the results of experiments comparing the brainwaves of people who are given this book versus those who take to the mats, the electrodes that light up inside the brain will probably look exactly alike. After you read Nudge and gain its insights, you might justifiably say that you already knew this--it's human nature to wish to conform with the views of others, as you'll see in this book.


In my opinion, there will probably be two types of readers for this book:

1. People who like Yoga. For this type of reader, the book might look like a `how to' guide for getting people to do things in a better way for themselves. The book starts small and builds nicely. In this way, one can follow the trail that Thaler and Sunstein carve out from within the wilderness of human behavior. They explain and establish the basic tenets of prospect theory and translate those insights into actions that promote improved decisions and better results. They introduce the concept of `choice architecture' and its theoretical underpinnings in politics. To change up the pace and add more input, the authors debunk commonly espoused topics such as `the hot hand' by demonstrating the inability of people to accurately judge results. They discuss biases that kick in when we think we're actually seeing things clearly. These readers will take the book and discuss it at dinner parties and baseball games. Its information will be shared and extended in many venues by these types of readers.
2. People who don't like Yoga. This type of reader recoils at any mention of things that might seem to be a `how to' or a `self-help' book. But even this reader will dig in and secretly read this book.This covert reader will harvest its powerful insights and tools and use them each and every day. This person will neither quote the authors directly nor cite their examples in daily conversation. However, this will take supreme effort. Since this reader will retain all of the concepts and begin to utilize them in practice in their daily lives, cognitive dissonance will rule this reader--the mismatch between what this reader knows is valuable and what this reader actually declares as valuable will constantly hobble this reader. To others: Be wary of this type of reader because even though this book is never mentioned, this reader knows about human behavior. This type of reader is carrying the concealed weapon of knowledge around inside her head.

In power Yoga, the teacher or guru is honored for leading the student down the proper path. Consider this review a herogram to the authors of Nudge--> Namaste.

Nobody forced my neighbor to buy that expensive plasma TV. After reading Nudge now he knows why he spent so much more money than he intended. It seemed like such a bargain, standing right next to a much more expensive set in the store display. In Thaler and Sunstein's terms, the store nudged him to buy that TV. They organized the choice set in a way that gently moved him towards what they want him to do. They got him to buy a pricey TV by taking advantage of the principle of contrast. Such psychological biases have been exploited since the beginning of human commerce to sell us things we don't need. This book makes a compelling argument that the same psychological biases can be used to get us what we really want.

After reading Nudge it is easy to understand how small things can make a big difference. For instance, most people I know would like to save more money; most of them don't. Nudge convincingly argues that people can, and should be helped to do that. Very few of us can commit to saving more money today, but most of us can commit today to save more money tomorrow. This human tendency can be used to help people save, and Nudge describes how several companies have already implemented such programs successfully by nudging employees to committing in advance to save part of a future salary increase.

By relying on a large body of work in Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Thaler and Sunstein elegantly argue that people have predictable, systematic biases and that this knowledge can be put to work to help all of us.

Their basic thesis is simple and brilliant: First, how options are presented matters. There is no neutral way to present options. If you present the salads first in a buffet, people will eat more healthy food than if you put salads at the end. Second, don't reduce choice, but organize the options so that people will be more likely to end up with what they themselves would prefer. This is as true for the salad bar as it is for health care.

This amazing book is useful for individuals and policy makers. Policy makers should be interested because such "choice architecture" is strictly non-partisan. Individuals should be interested because this book will nudge them to improve their life their way.

Someone should contact the publisher/author so this book can be sold in a Kindle edition. I really want to read it, but will wait until I can get it on my Kindle.

Some designers think that Schiphol in Amsterdam is the world's finest airport. Its layout is logical and efficient, internet terminals are numerous and free, and stores are so attractive that locals come to the airport to shop. Even the men's urinals are innovative - they contain a small ceramic fly baked into the target zone. The fly reduces mopping by 80% by reminding men to focus their efforts.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein cited the strategic placement of ceramic insects as an example of a "nudge" - a low cost incentive to make the right choice. If you read the blog Jam Side Down, from which this review is condensed, you are very likely to read this book. If you liked Freakonomics, Predictably Irrational, or The Logic of Life, you will like Nudge even better - it packs about 50% more insight per page and the insights matter more. If you follow the blogs or columns of Tyler Cowen, Thomas Sowell, or Robert Samuelson, you are in for a treat.

The book is full of both ideas and of examples like the ceramic fly that leave you thinking "why don't we always do it this way?"

The authors are faculty of the University of Chicago and both distinguished scholars. Thaler is famous for pioneering "behavioral economics" which studies the influence of social, cognitive, and emotional biases on economic decisions. Cass Sunstein is a comically prolific legal scholar who has written about roughly every legal topic there is. His CV lists twenty-eight books and more than three hundred articles (and cautions that it displays only "a very partial listing"). They are tightly connected to the Obama campaign. Austin Goolsby is Obama's lead economic advisor and Thaler's colleague and soulmate. Sunstein was Obama's colleague on the law faculty and is leaving Chicago to become the director of Harvard's Program on Risk Regulation.

Sunstein and Thaler embrace a