NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Corruption and Growth

The psychology of social norms.

ROSE-ACKERMAN Susan, PALIFKA Bonnie J. Corruption and government : causes, consequences, and reform Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016, XXIII-618 p. ISBN 978-1-107-44109-5 MOND 723 Resume editeur : The second edition of Corruption and Government updates Susan Rose-Ackerman's 1999 book to address emerging issues and to rethink old questions in light of new data. The book analyzes the research explosion that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall, the founding of Transparency Intern...

Corruption and government : causes, consequences, and reform

Corruption has fierce impacts on economic and societal development and is subject to a vast range of institutional, jurisdictional, societal, and economic conditions. It is this paper's aim to provide a reassessment and a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey of existing literature on corruption and its causes and effects. A particularly strong focus is put on presenting and discussing insights resulting from empirical research and contrasting recent with older findings.

Causes and effects of corruption: what has past decade's empirical research taught us? a survey

Nudges are popular types of interventions. Recent years have seen the rise of ‘norm-nudges’—nudges whose mechanism of action relies on social norms, eliciting or changing social expectations. Norm-nudges can be powerful interventions, but they can easily fail to be effective and can even backfire unless they are designed with care. We highlight important considerations when designing norm-nudges and discuss a general model of social behavior based on social expectations and conditional preferences. We present the results of several experiments wherein norm-nudging can backfire, and ways to avoid those negative outcomes.

/pdf/nudging-with-care-the-risks-and-benefits-of-social-25uwp6wake.pdf

Nudging with care: the risks and benefits of social information

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/200423/1/1024725456.pdf

Contagion of pro- and anti-social behavior among peers and the role of social proximity

We examine the influence of corruption on migration for 111 countries between 1985 and 2000. Robust evidence indicates that corruption is among the push factors of migration, especially fuelling skilled migration. We argue that corruption tends to diminish the returns to education, which is particularly relevant to the better educated.

/pdf/the-effect-of-corruption-on-migration-1985-2000-2eyqdv1fzv.pdf

The Effect of Corruption on Migration, 1985-2000

We examine framing effects in nudging honesty, in the spirit of the growing norm-nudge literature, by utilizing a high-powered and pre-registered study. Across four treatments, participants received one random truthful norm-nudge that emphasized ‘moral suasion based on either what other participants previously did (empirical message) or approved of doing (normative message) and varied in the framing (positive or negative) in which it was presented. Subsequently, participants repeatedly played the ‘mind game’ in which they were first asked to think of a number, then rolled a digital die, and then reported whether the two numbers coincide, in which case a bonus was paid. Hence, whether or not the report was truthful remained unobservable to the experimenters. We find compelling null effects with tight confidence intervals showing that none of the norm-nudge interventions worked. A follow-up experiment reveals the reason for these convincing null-effects: the information norm-nudges did not actually change norms. Notably, our secondary results suggest that a substantial portion of individuals misremembered norm-nudges such that they conveniently supported deviant behavior. This subset of participants indeed displayed significantly higher deviance levels, a behavior pattern in line with literature on motivated misremembering and belief distortion. We discuss the importance of this high-powered null finding for the flourishing norm-nudge literature and derive policy implications.

/pdf/requiem-for-a-nudge-framing-effects-in-nudging-honesty-4gfx75an2d.pdf

Eugen Dimant

Papers

Causes and effects of corruption: what has past decade's empirical research taught us? a survey

Nudging with care: the risks and benefits of social information

Contagion of pro- and anti-social behavior among peers and the role of social proximity

The Effect of Corruption on Migration, 1985-2000

Requiem for a Nudge: Framing effects in nudging honesty