Richard H. ThalerRecensioni

I first became interested in behavioural economics a few years ago. It’s a branch of economics that combines some psychology elements, asking the question – what if humans don’t behave rationally? What if they do things that benefit them and not others? What if they act stupidly? It’s quite a departure the basis of traditional economics – even radical. Richard Thaler is one of the pioneers of this field and this is the story of how it all happened.

The story starts with Thaler as a young economist, noting that his professors didn’t think he would amount to much. He starts working with psychologists on the fringe of what’s expected in economics, pushing the envelope on disproving the basis theories of economics that you would have learned in high school. But humans don’t behave like ‘Econs’, those rational, selfless beings. They can be lazy (something Thaler calls himself several times) and they make mistakes. They will travel extra to save $10 on a $500 purchase, but not on a $30 purchase (which is just bad maths). They have biases and are more willing to take risks if they are losing to even the stakes (which makes no sense). It’s an insight into how we all behave at various times – inconsistently and with varying fairness. Thaler follows this through with multiple examples and experiments as the book travels through his career. It starts with everyday issues and continues into the world of finance, looking at the stock market and other areas. (This wasn’t my favourite area of the book, maybe because I don’t work in the area but it did raise a lot of points about value and investment). There is a relatively small part about nudge economics in the UK to gently direct people into making correct choices (you can read more in the book Nudge). However, I really enjoyed the stories about the university faculty choosing their new offices and the draft for American football. All totally relatable and apply to other sports with drafts too.

Thaler writes with a hefty dose of humour. I took this book to the hairdresser and didn’t expect to be laughing so much. It’s easy to understand and read, with multiple diagrams to highlight certain experiments as well as references should you want to look anything up in more detail. It’s probably not the book to start with if you have no economics background at all, but if you know a bit about traditional economics you’ll love how Thaler pokes fun at it.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

I can't think of a better public policy book than Nudge for the clear exposition of economic research, thoughtful suggestions, and downright humour. This is a book written for a country of diverse and strident opinions. Thaler and Sunstein suggest an incremental approach to public policy: why not nudge people into making better decisions for themselves. Leave them just enough choice to make them feel ownership over pension contributions, choice of medical insurance, even marriage. It's also a prescription for breaking the logjam in US Congress by taking a thoughtful, slightly right of centre approach to government. On my recent vacation to the West Coast I saw the ultimate bumper sticker for a cynical electorate: "Recycle Congress."

Нобелевку часто дают за открытия, совершенные в прошлом. Свежеиспеченный лауреат по экономике Ричард Талер свои отмеченные премией исследования по поведенческой экономике продолжает по сей день, что неудивительно: обычные люди ведут себя и думают совсем не так, как предписывается научными моделями, и нестыковки на каждом шагу. В этом году на русском вышло сразу две книги Талера. Это, по сути, автобиография американского исследователя и история развития того направления, у истоков которого он стоял и за которое ему, собственно, и дали заветный приз. Невероятно интересно читать о том, как досужий интерес и неортодоксальный взгляд на вещи пробивают себе дорогу ко всеобщему признанию.

Дорога эта не была устлана розами, и Талер честно признает, что по части экономики его учителя больших надежд на него не возлагали. Тем не менее знакомство с двумя другими «белыми воронами» экономики Амосом Тверски и Даниелом Канеманом (последнему тоже дадут Нобелевскую) помогло увидеть, что их новый взгляд, похоже, является предвестником сдвига парадигмы во всей науке. Будущие лауреаты и блестящие умы в книге повсюду: во взаимодействии с ними создавалось новое направление. Помните, эксперимент с детьми и печеньем на силу воли? Его создатель тоже был среди повитух. Но не только на студентах-старшекурсниках обкатывались новые озарения — Талер опробовал свои догадки на реальных бизнесах, работая консультантом и решая конкретные проблемы вроде той, что лучше, ежедневные низкие цены или регулярные акции-скидки? Описанные с юмором кейсы из всех областей, где происходят финансовые транзакции и принимаются стратегические решения, — от правительств и спортивных команд до новых феноменов вроде Uber — показывают, почему поведенческую экономику недооценивать не стоит и почему за ней будущее.

Талер скромно признает, что ничего сверхнового они не изобрели, они просто раскрыли глаза и стали задавать правильные вопросы. Лучше всех экономическое поведение людей, как полагает автор, раскусили фермеры, выставляющие свои продукты у обочины с коробочкой для «честной оплаты». Нюанс в коробке, прибитой к столу, — деньги в нее положить можно, но обратно их не достать. Люди не склонны плутовать, но, если расслабишься, можешь недосчитаться монет.

Good read for those interested in UX, economics, and policy.

A book about real economic agents in the real world of little information and less predictability, subject to all the mental and psychological fallacies and quirks of real human beings. The book, with all of 34 chapters (each of them mercifully brief), covers an astonishing range of economic decisions in the real day-to-day world, including investment in the share market and saving for retirement. It also reiterates the effectiveness of 'nudging', e.g. by timely reminders, by making the good option the default one (as in pension and savings schemes), health insurance, and so on. Not an afternoon's light read, but worth the effort.

Would highly recommend, it gives a great way to look at the decisions you make while also giving insight into the development of economics. It's also pretty easy to read considering the subject matter

The first few chapters are golden. The rest of the book is for those who cannot apply the first chapters on their own.

Interesante pero esperaba algo más

The short version: Humans have cognitive biases that affect their decision making. Using what we know about these biases, we can design choice architectures that make it easy for people to make good choices without taking the freedom to choose away from those who want to do so. Thaler and Sunstein describe these principles and give examples of how they can be applied to saving money, health care, and preserving freedoms.

Nudge acknowledges both the failures of one-size-fits-all government solutions and why cognitive biases cause the market to fail as a mechanism for providing social good.

Details on the later since the former seems more obvious to me. The purpose of the market is to maximize profit. Ideally, this goal lines up with the goals of general social good. This is often the case because competition allows people to go with the solution that best meets their goals.

However, cognitive biases can throw a wrench in this system. Advertising is the most obvious way. The whole purpose of marketing departments is to figure out how to provide information in a way that takes advantage of cognitive biases.

Things still work out for the most part for choices that are frequent and give good feedback. No amount of marketing is going to make people like a bad candy bar. This is less true for decisions that are rare or have no feedback (e.g., health care, marriage, retirement investing, buying a house). Good decisions are hard because information is lacking, feedback is slow, and educating yourself can be difficult and confusing.

The authors suggest, and I agree, that a fruitful compromise is to use nudges. A choice architecture structured around nudges allows users to make choices but ensure that the easy decision is good enough for most users*.

An example: Many companies provide 401k plans with automatic enrollment. Getting out of these plans is easy enough, and this nudge has greatly increased 401k plan enrollment. Wonderful! The market is working all on its own**. But we can still make things better. When automatic enrollment is used, some default investment must be chosen. The default is often overly conservative because companies do not want to be liable for losses. Employees will often stay with this plan, even if they increase their contribution, because they assume the default choice is a good choice. A useful nudge here would be for the government to give best practices guidelines that suggest better investments and remove liability for losses for defaults which follow those guidelines.

That is just one example. The point is that by changing the choice architecture, we can create decisions that allow for choice while still making it easy to make a decision that is good enough. These nudges may come from the government or from the market, but both are necessary because they both have their own strengths and weaknesses.



* Yes, nudges could be used for bad as well as for good and you have to trust those making the choice architecture to make the nudged decision a good one without making alternatives too difficult. Given that, I still think nudges are better than one-size-fits-all solutions. I also believe that we already have nudges used for (sometimes) bad; it is called marketing. We may as well give the same tools to those who would use them to get rid of one-size-fits-all solutions.

** Not strictly true. There are laws that incentive companies to offer 401k plans, but we will ignore those for now.

Addresses psychology, cognitive flaws and biases and behavioral economics, but the recommendations are more skewed toward social science and government/public policy (issues like pension schemes, climate change, organ donation etc.)

This was probably ground-breaking in 2008 but not especially impressive now compared to the host of behavioral economic books out there. The main value-add for me was probably the concept Libertarian Paternalism?

What I liked:
1. There were quite a few fresh examples (unlike some of the more commonly-used examples already found in other books).
2. The focus of the book is skewed toward government policies which can be extremely complex, and the authors did a credible job in presenting the host of consideration and nuances. [There were also some discussions on personal decisions].

What I didn’t like:
1. A lot of facts and details that often didn’t lead to a clear point. Maybe the message is eventually made somewhere, but it’s not always clear where the rambling was headed.
2. Given the sheer amount of nuances involved in the case studies, it would've been helpful if the authors made the points easier to sieve out. In SOME places they added short summaries to recap what they were trying to say. But the points didn't always gel directly with the details presented before.
3. They spoke about Covid-19 nudges and mistakes without going into detail....I found that disappointing as I thought it would have been a great case study.

In short, the book comes with some great ideas. BUT it could've been written in a way that makes it much more compelling. In the authors’ own words “We have tried to clear up some of the examples of imprecise writing in this version….” And they did it partially by adding a concluding chapter to clarify what they were trying to say in the initial chapters…. why not making the writing clear and precise in the whole book in the first place?

What it covers:
• Key behavioral economics principles to understand why people behave the way they do. Find out about our 2 cognitive systems, common mental heuristics or biases, and why we make bad decisions;
• How you can help people to make better decisions yet retain freedom of choice using the Libertarian Paternalism approach;
• What “choice architecture” involves, when you should use nudges, and the tools you can use to design effective nudges;
• How sludge can create the opposite outcomes as nudges, and why/how to de-sludge; and
• Detailed real-world case studies to understand how nudges can be applied to address various challenges/goals including financial well-being (including retirement savings, debt management and insurance) and national/global issues (e.g. organ donation and climate change).

Book summary at: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-nudge-improving-decisions-about-health-w...

So much good advice. I really must implement the "insurance deductible account" idea.

my first DNF for the year...

i'm disappointed with myself...for a long time i was looking forward to reading this book, only to get so bogged down i had to finally give up a few pages short of the half-way point.

the first 5 chapters were really good. scholarly, but entertaining. then followed chapters of case studies that leaned more on the sides of economics and governance rather done on psychology and personal development...and i just struggled. i'm really interested in this topic, too...so maybe i'm just not really in the mood.

plus, the book was very targeted to an american audience. not a bad thing since the lessons can be generalized. but when i have to do that mental adjustment every chapter...when my focus is already running away from me...

maybe i'll pick it up again sometime

To improve our decision making, people need nudges. Nudges are simple decisions we make that make the decisions we make better. This involves using good choice architecture. I like this phrase.

However, I don't really like the book. The book started enough solidly but for me ran out of steam. I love the concept and actually subscribe to their website. The web articles are simpler and more salient.

So, I would probably nudge you to the website instead.

Digital audiobook read by Lloyd James.

Thaler and Sunstein are professors specializing in Behavioral Economics. This work explores the ways in which decision options are presented to achieve the result the designer hopes for … i.e. the nudges.

I found much of this very interesting and kept thinking of incidents in recent years that pointed out how such nudges were beneficial. Certainly, my parents nudged my saving habits, even though they never studied economics. But not all nudges are beneficial. The book also made me aware of the nudges that I need to be mindful of. (Extended warranties? Uh, no.)

I had to laugh when reading the updated section at the end, and they reported that the single example that got the most attention was the fly in the urinals at Schiphol airport! I’ve been thinking hard about how I might replicate their results to nudge my husband to put the dirty dishes IN the dishwasher vs just on the counter right above the dishwasher.

The digital audiobook I listened to most was read by Lloyd James. He does a fine job, but much of the material is rather dry, and of course, the listener misses the graphs and illustrations. My local library’s CD version was narrated by Sean Pratt. A fellow book club member listened to a version narrated by Richard Thaler.

I found this book to be part autobiographical, part psychology, and part economics. I enjoyed Thaler's anecdotes and his experiences and battles in the academic world. I understood some of the examples that Thaler provided on how we make decisions, both rationally and irrationally. I particularly enjoyed his take on how teams should prepare for the NFL draft.

I am also familiar with various books and online lectures by Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University on behavior economics. I appreciate that economists try to write books that the general public might understand. Thaler does a pretty good job at this also.

If one is interested in the evolution of the idea of behavioral economics and the struggles to promote it, I recommend this book.

how presentation can affect choices and advocating more choice engineering

My data-science reading continues with a classic from Nobel laureate Richard Thaler. This series of journal essays have held up well as an introduction to behavioral economics, and how it attempts to explain a rational market's bursts of exuberance. The Monty Python transcript is just a bonus.

Wow! This book starts off really interestingly; it details the way our minds work and the techniques for getting people to listen to your message. All worth reading and I took several pages of notes to reconsider at my leisure.

Then, we hit part two: a party political broadcast on behalf of the neoliberal parties of the world. Oh well, I'll skip that bit and get on to the climate section. As a green, this will recapture my interest...

The text is that money talks. Raise a few taxes, but not too much. The poor will be scared off from fossil fuel use and the rich? Why, they'll pay for ignoring the regulations and the poor are so stupid that they'll take a little extra money and suffer in silence.

Thanks boys, don't call us, we'll call you - all sorts of names!½

Came to get some insights on how to apply nudges to my product management work.
Instead heard how to fix the American society (not used to sharing/caring at a large government scale). Lots and lots of US centered form filling, government policy details.
Good points are:
- raises awareness on the fact that nudges matter
- authors does not put himself too much at the center of the book like other non-fictions these days (thought the use of "we" instead of "I" creates a weird pattern of wondering who he is talking about sometimes)

Richard Thaler este laureatul Premiului Nobel în Economie, 2017.

Nudge este cartea care ne schimbă modul de a gândi despre alegere, arătându-ne cum îi putem influența pe oameni pentru a lua decizii mai bune legate de sănătate, bogăție și fericire. Folosindu-se de exemple revelatoare din realitatea practică de zi cu zi, Richard H. Thaler și Cass R. Sunstein arată că nu există alegere care să fie vreodată prezentată într-un mod neutru. Întrebarea care se pune este: când avem nevoie de un ghiont în direcția potrivită?

Îmi place la nebunie!
Este una dintre puținele citite recent care mi-au schimbat fundamental modul de a vedea lumea din jur. Exact la fel de surprinzător, e o lectură antrenantă, cu exemple din domenii cum nu se poate mai îndepărtate unele de altel: începând cu pisoare și terminând cu donarea de organe și căsătoria. STEVEN D. LEVITT, coautor al cărților Super Freakonomics și Când să jefuiești o bancă

Cartea ghionturilor nu-ți dă un ghiont, ci te ia pe sus cu totul! DANIEL GILBERT, autorul cărții Stumbling on Happiness

Cartea aceasta este formidabilă! Îți va schimba modul de gândire nu doar în privința lumii înconjurătoare și a unora dintre marile provocări pe care le generează, ci și când vine vorba despre tine însuți. MICHAEL LEWIS, autorul cărții The Big Short

Cu o putere de influență enormă. Arhitecții alegerii sunt peste tot. ANDREW SPARROW, Guardian

Thaler este geniul creativ care a inventat domeniul economiei comportamentale. DANIEL KAHNEMAN, autorul cărții Gândire rapidă, gândire lentă

Nudge. Cartea ghionturilor este un proiect editorial susţinut de Marfin Bank România.

Nudge este o lectură obligatorie pentru cei care sunt în căutare de soluții noi și eficiente, în aspecte dintre cele mai variate ale vieții: strategii de business, protecția mediului, fondurile de pensii sau asistența socială. Nu în ultimul rând, le va fi utilă şi celor interesați de o abordare nouă privind gândirea economică în contextul unor politici de natură liberală. Echipa MARFIN BANK ROMÂNIA

Not sure why I read this... Not the kind of thing I like at all. But it does kinda show how to be a sleaze ball and try to push people into doing what you want. That's yucky to me but I suppose if that is your thing this is a good book.

Audiobook note :good narrator.

This book is intended for "choice architects": people who design situations where others have to make a decision. This includes policymakers, human resources professionals, and teachers; among others. The book advocates a policy of "libertarian paternalism": allowing people to make their own decisions, but subtly encouraging them in one direction through design of default options or explicit propaganda. I found it very interesting and useful for my job