I just got done reading Nudge, the NYT bestseller that argues for economic policies motivated by behavioral economics. These policies fall
under the umbrella of what the authors call libertarian paternalism, or a set of policies that attempt to “nudge” people towards making better decisions without restricting their freedom of choice.
The book is full of fascinating economic studies and experiments– many of them done by Cornell professors– but the one study that jumped out the most was AEM Professor Brian Wansink’s experiment that investigated whether people judged their fullness by how much was left on their plate or by how much more they really wanted to eat. Subjects walked into a lab and were told they could eat as much Campbell’s soup as they wanted for 15 minutes. But unbeknownst to the subjects, one treatment involved bowls that refilled themselves automatically as the subjects ate more. The study found that students with the self-refilling bowls ate significantly more than their control group counterparts. According to this Sun article from 2007, this experiment won Wansink an Ig Nobel Prize back in 2007.
This book is a quick and enjoyable read for anyone, even if you don’t have an economics background. If you have taken Econ 3580, skip the first half of the book and get right into the new “nudges” that apply to organ donations, environmental policies, and marriage privatization.
