Numidica's Reviews > Nudge: The Final Edition

Interesting, but often simplistic. This is about how the architecture of presenting choices can drastically influence outcomes. The most well-known of the authors' arguments is about 401k retirement savings programs in the US. I have first-hand experience with this from my time as a manager in a tech company where I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to persuade my employees to commit at least 3% of their incomes to the 401k, because the company would match the first 3%. Effectively, this was a 3% pay raise, albeit one that would be deposited in savings, but I still could never break the 25% participation level with my employees, and the company as a whole did not get above 20%. By re-structuring the choice as opt-out, versus opt-in, companies regularly achieve >60% of their employees participating in these programs, because inertia is a powerful force. If, by doing nothing, workers will automatically be enrolled at the 3% minimum level, most of them will do so, whereas, if they have to actively choose to contribute, most will not.

Thaler and Sunstein present many such examples, with the punchline being that, in most cases people will select the choice that is easiest. To me this seems obvious, and so after a bit, I started skimming many of their examples, though I did read their section on climate change carefully.

All in all, not bad, but the content could be condensed.