Quotes from Richard H. Thaler

10. Calories count in New York City. The Big Apple recently adopted a law that requires fast-food restaurants with at least fifteen outlets in the city to post, in prominent places, the calories of each of their food items so that customers can make informed choices.

Loss aversion produces inertia, meaning a strong desire to stick with your current holdings. Loss aversion operates as a kind of cognitive nudge, pressing us not to make changes, even when changes are very much in our interests.

Economic theory textbooks would stop on the first page if the assumption of well-ordered preferences had to be abandoned, because without stable preferences there is nothing to be optimized.

Trayless cafeterias. Cafeteria managers have been taking a keen interest in reducing food waste. Seeing how easy it is to load up a tray with extra food that often goes uneaten and extra napkins that go unused, curious managers and students at Alfred University in New York tested a trayless policy over two days. When trays weren't offered, food and beverage waste dropped between 30 and 50 percent!

those working men who, before prohibition, could not resist the lure of the saloon on the way home Saturday night

professional money managers perform no better than simple market averages

Our principal claim here is that patients and doctors should be free to make their own agreements about that right. If patients want to waive the right to sue, they should be allowed to do exactly that. This increase in freedom is likely to help doctors and patients alike, and to make a valuable, even if modest, contribution to the health care problem.

Humans have limited time and brainpower. As a result, they use simple rules of thumb—heuristics—to help them make judgments.

suppose there was some medical procedure that will provide some modest health benefit but is extremely painful. However, the procedure is administered with a drug that does not prevent the pain but instead erases all memory of the event. Would you be willing to undertake this procedure?

One way to start to think about incentives is to ask four questions about a particular choice architecture: Who uses? Who chooses? Who pays? Who profits?

no propugnamos un gobierno más grande, sino sólo mejor gobernanza.

Second marriage, Samuel Johnson once quipped, "is the triumph of hope over experience.")

My hunch is that as the importance of a decision grows, the tendency to rely on quantitative analyses done by others tends to shrink. When the championship or the future of the company is on the line, managers tend to rely on their gut instincts.

On average, those who eat with one other person eat about 35 percent more than they do when they are alone; members of a group of four eat about 75 percent more; those in groups of seven or more eat 96 percent more.

Often we can do more to facilitate good behavior by removing some small obstacle than by trying to shove people in a certain direction.

The Spotlight Effect One reason why people expend so much effort conforming to social norms and fashions is that they think that others are closely paying attention to what they are doing. If you wear a suit to a social event where everyone else has gone casual, you feel like everyone is looking at you funny and wondering why you are such a geek. If you are subject to such fears, here is a possibly comforting thought: they aren't really paying as much attention to you as you think.

A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates.

Not all urinals are fun and games, though. Take the "Piss Screen" (yes, that's the name), also from Germany. It is a game, but one with a serious message: Don't drink and drive. Billed as "an interactive experience—not to be mistaken for the Wii," the Piss Screen is actually a pressure-sensitive inlay set in urinals that simulates what it's like to hit the road after a few drinks.

When people have a hard time predicting how their choices will end up affecting their lives, they have less to gain by numerous options and perhaps even by choosing for themselves. A nudge might be welcomed.

Or consider this one: people's judgments about strangers are affected by whether they are drinking iced coffee or hot coffee! Those given iced coffee are more likely to see other people as more selfish, less sociable, and, well, colder than those who are given hot coffee.27 This, too, happens quite unconsciously.

It is particularly hard for people to make good decisions when they have trouble translating the choices they face into the experiences they will have.

Unfortunately, some of life's most important decisions do not come with many opportunities to practice. Most students choose a college only once. Outside of Hollywood, most of us choose a spouse, well, not more than two or three times. Few of us get to try many different careers.

Generally, the higher the stakes, the less often we are able to practice.

Self-control issues are most likely to arise when choices and their consequences are separated in time.