Nudge Improving Decisions About

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain in this important exploration of choice architecture, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

Do people always act rationally and in their own best interests? US economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein did not believe so, and were convinced that psychological factors often stopped people from making the best decisions.