Richard Thaler Quotes

A nudge is some feature of the environment that changes the behaviour of humans but would not change the behaviour of rational economic agents, what we call Econs.

Whenever I'm asked to autograph a copy of 'Nudge,' the book I wrote with Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor, I sign it, 'Nudge for good.' Unfortunately, that is meant as a plea, not an expectation.

It is true that I am one of the co-authors of 'Nudge,' and I am a behavioral economist, but it does not mean that everything we write about in that book is behavioral economics, nor does it mean that my co-author, the distinguished legal scholar Cass Sunstein, is a behavioral economist.

Every policy is shaped by two forces: background analysis and foreground politics. The political forces are loud, self-serving and, in the case of energy policy, well known.

It is our task to provide policies suited to the different situations of today.

Forget the consultants, the pundits and the pollsters; good policy is good politics.

The best way you make policy in Washington is by doing it yourself.

Only when a political system has decided what is good and beautiful, can it take the intermediate step and set the priorities for reaching its goals.

How can we decide matters of public policy when we cannot understand them?

Government is about hard choices.

Public policy must lead and not merely react.

Policy making is not as easy as slurping down cabbage soup.

When a government faces an evil that might be avoided, the usual pattern is to first debate whether or not the evil is real or imagined; then determine how evil it really is; then is it an appropriate function of government to avoid it? Then what are the alternative ways to avoid it? Then what are the costs to avoid it? And finally, is the benefit of avoiding the evil worth the cost? In those cases where it is, it is by this time too late to avoid the evil and discussions shift to ameliorating the evil.

A surprising number of government committees will make important decisions on fundamental matters with less attention than each individual would give to buying a suit.

Politics is about making institutions work somewhat better, helping people’s lives at the margins

If you're trying to understand why it is that certain things happen in Sacramento and certain things don't, at the end of the day, it comes down to the issue of incentives: We do what we're incentivized to do.

My son had nothing to do with policy or decision making, nor did I discuss the elections or any other matter with him.

If you can't legislate, you can't deal with problems.

In the world of traditional economics, it shouldn't matter whether you use an opt-in or opt-out system. So long as the costs of registering as a donor or a nondonor are low, the results should be similar. But many findings of behavioral economics show that tiny disparities in such rules can make a big difference.

What one has created by regulation, one could address by regulation.

I'm not here today to tell you government doesn't have a role to play. It does, but it needs to be the right role.

Government is about priorities.

I don't write policy for my government.

We think the government is running the country, but it is just a policymaker. Unknowingly, people are inviting the government to run their lives. The only business of the government is to come up with the right policies.

Science can tell us what can be done in principle, but it is then a matter for public debate as to what should be done. And ultimately, it is a role for politicians to decide the answers.