Sublime

Choice architects (such as Carolyn the cafeteria director) have many opportunities to choose defaults, and they can do so in ways that are self-serving or welfare enhancing.

As alternatives become more numerous and more complex, choice architects have more work to do, and are much more likely to influence choices

Good policy uses incentives to channel behavior toward some desired outcome. Bad policy either ignores incentives, or fails to anticipate how rational individuals might change their behavior to avoid being penalized.

Early experiences with defined-contribution savings plans revealed that Humans could use some help on three fronts: enrolling in the plans, increasing their contribution rates, and improving their investment returns.

alternative is to adopt what has become known as automatic enrollment.

People’s emotional response to extremely long odds led them to reverse their usual taste for risk, and to become risk seeking when pursuing a long-shot gain and risk avoiding when faced with the extremely remote possibility of loss. (Which is why they bought both lottery tickets and insurance.) “If you think about the possibilities at all, you

Consider a class of regulations requiring “cooling-off periods.” The rationale is that in the heat of the moment, consumers might make ill-considered or improvident decisions. Self-control problems are the underlying concern.