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 enlarge | Authors: Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $14.90
You Save: $11.10 (43%)
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Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 293
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 293
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0300122233
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.019
EAN: 9780300122237
ASIN: 0300122233
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 False advertising July 5, 2008
8 out of 17 found this review helpful
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.
Excellent even for normal people June 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
 Interesting Book June 18, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Enjoyable June 12, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
I liked the book. It was interesting and well written...not extremely addicting, but enjoyable.
 A hollow and anti-democratic worldview June 7, 2008
60 out of 77 found this review helpful
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.
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