Quotes from Richard H. Thaler

One of the causes of status quo bias is a lack of attention. Many people adopt what we will call the "yeah, whatever" heuristic.

In complex situations, the Just Maximize Choices mantra is not enough to create good policy.

If you look at economics textbooks, you will learn that homo economicus can think like Albert Einstein, store as much memory as IBM's Big Blue, and exercise the willpower of Mahatma Gandhi. Really. But the folks that we know are not like that. Real people have trouble with long division if they don't have a calculator, sometimes forget their spouse's birthday, and have a hangover on New Year's Day. They are not homo economicus; they are homo sapiens.

2. We can't do evidence-based policy without evidence.

special case of this rule of thumb is what might be called the "1/n" heuristic: "When faced with 'n' options, divide assets evenly across the options."3 Put the same number of eggs in each basket.

people are more likely to keep what they start with than to trade it, even when the initial allocations were done at random.

Recall that the more insurance you buy, the more you pay, and the right to sue is a form of insurance.

They have convinced their customers that the entire shopping experience is an orgy of bargain hunting, and go out of their way to reinforce that image.

even when you are talking to the boss, you need to warn of the threat of an impending disaster.

specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same thing.

What this means is that people do not assign specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same thing.

Whenever anyone asks me for investment advice, I tell them to buy a diversified portfolio heavily tilted toward stocks, especially if they are young, and then scrupulously avoid reading anything in the newspaper aside from the sports section. Crossword puzzles are acceptable, but watching cable financial news networks is strictly forbidden.#

people's choices are pervasively influenced by the design elements selected by choice architects.

That does not mean something is wrong with us as humans, but it does mean that our understanding of human behavior can be improved by appreciating how people systematically go wrong.

Libertarian paternalism is a relatively weak, soft, and nonintrusive type of paternalism because choices are not blocked, fenced off, or significantly burdened. If people want to smoke cigarettes, to eat a lot of candy, to choose an unsuitable health care plan, or to fail to save for retirement, libertarian paternalists will not force them to do otherwise—

Doctors are crucial choice architects, and with an understanding of how Humans think, they could do far more to improve people's health and thus to lengthen their lives.

You might think that employees have especially good information about their firm's future prospects, but a careful study by Shlomo Benartzi (2001) finds otherwise. Specifically, there is no correlation between the allocation to company stock and subsequent stock performance.

The money that has recently been won is called "house money" because in gambling parlance the casino is referred to as the house. Betting some of the money that you have just won is referred to as "gambling with the house's money," as if it were, somehow, different from some other kind of money. Experimental evidence reveals that people are more willing to gamble with money that they consider house money.

The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made by someone else.

The nudge provided by asking people what they intend to do can be accentuated by asking them when and how they plan to do it. This

we will see, loss aversion operates as a kind of cognitive nudge, pressing us not to make changes, even when

It follows that either desirable or undesirable behavior can be increased, at least to some extent, by drawing public attention to what others are doing. (Note to political parties: If you would like to increase turnout, please do not lament the large numbers of people who fail to vote.)*

It turns out that if you ask people, the day before the election, whether they intend to vote, you can increase the probability of their voting by as much as 25 percent!

Hint: always take the largest deductible you can. It will save you a lot of money over the long run.)