The Tax Bill Avoids this Planning Fallacy (for Now)
The congressional tax overhaul avoids a common behavioral mistake that would have increased revenue in the short term at the expense of future tax revenue.
The congressional tax overhaul avoids a common behavioral mistake that would have increased revenue in the short term at the expense of future tax revenue.
By factoring in personality traits, situational features, and timing, we can better persuade people who want to be persuaded.
In the mid-60s, Chicago economist Milton Friedman coined the phrase “We’re all Keynesians now.” Half a century later, we might say instead: “We’re all behavioral economists now.”
Richard Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, is this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
I was much influenced by a brilliant, pathbreaking paper, “Picking and Choosing,” by Edna Ullmann-Margalit and Sidney Morgenbesser.
If the maxim of nudges is “Keep it simple,” it has a counterpart for self-interested choice architects: Make it complex.
How can we design a system for investors that allows for potentially harmful behavior but minimizes the harm such behavior causes?
A friend of mine shared this simple thought: “My ultimate goal is to change people’s behavior. Behavior change techniques are powerful enough tools. I do not need to know what the brain does.”
How can we be sure the positives of nudging outweigh the negatives?
With Tax day less than two weeks away, my guess is that you fall into one of two camps.