Nudge (book) Nudge (book) Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness is a book written by University of Chicago economist Richard H. Thaler and Harvard Law School Professor Cass R. Sunstein, first published in 2008. The book draws on research in psychology and behavioral economics to defend libertarian paternalism and active engineering of choice architecture. The book received largely positive reviews. "The Guardian" described it as "never intimidating, always amusing and elucidating: a jolly economic romp but with serious lessons within." It was named one of the best books of 2008 by "The Economist". One of the main justifications for Thaler's
Nudge (book) people having the desire to save more, yet procrastinating on actually doing so. This program would invite "participants to commit themselves, in advance, to a series of contribution increases timed to coincide with pay raises". The book contains an analysis of the Bush administration program Medicare Part D. Thaler and Sunstein state that "on some dimensions, Bush was on the right track" with the plan, but that, "as a piece of choice architecture...it suffered from a cumbersome design that impeded good decision making". Specifically, they think that default choices for programs should not have been random and that beneficiaries of