ABSTRACT

In Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein make a convincing case that governments should "nudge" their citizens to make better decisions. The book's summary of decades of research from behavioral economics and psychology, combined with its accessible writing style, helped make it a major success among the public, academics, and policy-makers. The book's seemingly more realistic view of human decision-making contrasted with the more abstract, theoretical assumptions of neoclassical economics. Within academia, the book's concepts of "choice architecture" and "nudging" were quickly adopted by other disciplines interested in behavior change. For example, public-health researchers have examined whether nudging can improve the health of large populations by reducing smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity. In the United States, the success of Nudge inspired the creation of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. This group was formally created by an executive order of President Barack Obama in September 2015.