Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

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Yale University Press, Jan 1, 2008 - Business & Economics - 293 pages

A New York Times bestseller with more than 1.5 million copies sold

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Economist and the Financial Times

“An essential read . . . loaded with good ideas that financial-service executives, policy makers, Wall Street mavens, and all savers can use.”—John F. Wasik, Boston Globe

“Save the planet, save yourself. Do-gooders, policymakers, this one's for you.”—Newsweek

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and legal scholar and bestselling author Cass Sunstein explain in this important exploration of choice architecture that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

In Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take—from neither the left nor the right—on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative books to come along in many years.

 

Contents

Section 1
17
Section 2
18
Section 3
40
Section 4
53
Section 5
61
Section 6
72
Section 7
81
Section 8
101
Section 13
157
Section 14
159
Section 15
175
Section 16
183
Section 17
199
Section 18
207
Section 19
215
Section 20
229

Section 9
103
Section 10
118
Section 11
132
Section 12
145
Section 21
236
Section 22
252
Section 23
255
Section 24
263

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About the author (2008)

Richard H. Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics, is the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. His latest book is Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics. Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and most recently the author of Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide.

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