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Review of Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008, 293+x pages.

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Notes

  1. The reviewer would like to thank Scott Beaulier for pointing this aspect in Thaler’s and Sunstein’s model.

  2. Von Mises (1998, pp. 75–89) explains that polylogism is an epistemological view asserting that “the logical structure of the mind” is different with the members of various human groups implying that the ideas and logic of these members differ in accordance with the specific group they belong to.

  3. There is also an incentive problem within the government that the Public Choice literature has repeatedly emphasized. People working in the government do not necessarily have any incentives to be effective and meet citizens’ needs to the extent that, by making suboptimal decisions, they might be in position to request more funds. In addition, their incentives might be to meet the desires of politically powerful citizens who are not necessarily the same as the ones who need help.

References

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  • Von Mises, L. (1998). Human action: a treatise on economics. Auburn: Ludwig Von Mises Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

    Alexandre Padilla

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  1. Alexandre Padilla
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Correspondence to Alexandre Padilla.

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Padilla, A. Review of Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness . Rev Austrian Econ 22, 425–429 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-009-0094-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-009-0094-4

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