Quotes from Richard H. Thaler

choices depend, in part, on the way in which problems are described.

See Fineman (2004), 123: "We should transfer the social and economic subsidies and privilege that marriage now receives to a new family core connection—that of the caretaker-dependent.

The clear lesson here is that consistent and unwavering people, in the private or public sector, can move groups and practices in their preferred direction. More

Once I have a mug, I don't want to give it up. But if I don't have one, I don't feel an urgent need to buy one. 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.

In any case, there is no reason to think that civil unions and private arrangements, religious and otherwise, cannot provide as much protection of children as official marriage does. If children need material support, that support can be required directly through legal institutions. If children need stable homes, the question is whether an official licensing scheme with the name marriage contributes enough to family stability to be worth the candle. Maybe

predictions can't vary more than the thing being forecast.

The premise of the article, and later the book, is that in our increasingly complicated world people cannot be expected to have the expertise to make anything close to optimal decisions in all the domains in which they are forced to choose.

In many areas, ordinary consumers are novices, interacting in a world inhabited by experienced professionals trying to sell them things.

It is usually good to provide people with lots of options, but when the question is complicated, sensible choice architecture guides people in the right directions.

There is an important clue here about how seemingly similar groups, cities, and even nations can converge on very different beliefs and actions simply because of modest and even arbitrary variations in starting points.

people make good choices in contexts in which they have experience, good information, and prompt feedback—say, choosing among ice cream flavors.

They do less well in contexts in which they are inexperienced and poorly informed, and in which feedback is slow or infrequent

be and often is a private sector, for-profit activity. How might someone make a buck and also reduce drunk driving? It took hours in Wisconsin bars talking to young men for Michael Rothschild of the University of Wisconsin School of Business to hone a winning formula. His grand insight? Use limousines.

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." People

Economists have not always been so dense about self-control problems. For roughly two centuries, the economists who wrote on this topic knew their Humans. In fact, an early pioneer of what we would now call a behavioral treatment of self-control was none other than the high priest of free market economics: Adam Smith. When most people think about Adam Smith, they think of his most famous work, The Wealth of Nations

Choosers are human, so designers should make life as easy as possible.

The problem with this argument is that it can be hard to find a true expert who does not have a conflict of interest. It is illogical to think that someone who is not sophisticated enough to choose a good portfolio for her retirement saving will somehow be sophisticated about searching for a financial advisor, mortgage broker, or real estate agent.

dumb principal" problems.

Knowing something about the cognitive system has allowed others to discover systematic biases in the way we think.

Learning is most likely if people get immediate, clear feedback after each try.

The academic effort of college students is influenced by their peers, so much so that the random assignments of first-year students to dormitories or roommates can have big consequences for their grades and hence on their future prospects. (Maybe parents should worry less about which college their kids go to and more about which roommate they get.)

He tried his hand at doing some research on the psychology of the stock market, but grew frustrated with the reactions he got from the referees at mainstream finance and economics journals and eventually abandoned the research program.

Marriage might be seen, in part, as a solution to a self-control problem, in which people take steps to increase the likelihood that their relationship will endure. If divorce is difficult, then marriages are more likely to be stable. Marital stability is usually good for children (though children can also benefit from the end of a bad marriage).

Weber-Fechner Law holds that the just-noticeable difference in any variable is proportional to the magnitude of that variable.