Nudges Made British Life Better

Just a few days after Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize in economics earlier this month, the U.K.’s Behavioural Insights Team released its annual report. What good timing! Thaler helped inspire the creation of the Behavioural Insights Team in 2010, not only with his academic work, but also by numerous (and continuing) discussions with the team.

Drawing on work in psychology, Thaler showed that people don’t always make fully rational choices, and that their decisions can be greatly affected by apparently minor factors (such as where high-calorie foods are placed in a grocery store). Guided by Thaler’s work, companies and governments found that if you enroll people automatically in savings plans, if you simplify people’s interactions with services or products, if you reduce or simplify form-filling requirements, or if you provide reminders and clear disclosures, you can make a difference in people’s lives.1508944350128