Proving how I am always ahead of the zeitgeist, anticipating trends before they happen, and living up to my reputation of informing the politics of the future, I have just read Nudge.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first two sections, detailing how they do the sociological and psychological research which informs much of behavioural economics.
As ever, though, the descriptive parts of a book like this don't translate well into the analytical parts, and Thaler and Sunstein's application of their idea into policy areas left me feeling deflated: if this represents some of the most innovative thinking as to how governments address policy issues, we should all feel bereft.
The two conclusions I draw from reading Nudge are these: 1) Practices from the private sector, which make the most of the natural behaviour of human beings, should of course be imported into the public and voluntary sectors. No one sector has a monopoly on clever ideas or practices. 2) Nudge is (as the authors note) apolitical. Why it is only being appropriated by the Conservatives in the UK is a mystery to me; it's policy prescriptions (insofar as there are any) are about better governing, not better politics.
