The Nudge Conundrum

Ride-hailing companies are gaming drivers. Drivers are trying to game back. It hasn’t been a joyride

- Jackie Davalos and Drake Bennett

In 2008, University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein published Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. It’s a breezy tour through behavioral science, especially the ways in which decision-making can be shaped by what the authors call “choice architecture.” When a store puts sugary snacks at eye level so a customer is enticed to buy them, that’s choice architecture, and when credit card companies set low minimum payments to get people to pay interest, that’s choice architecture, too. The book’s argument is that we should enlist so-called nudges to socially beneficial ends, such as automatically enrolling workers in 401(k) plans. In the years since the book’s release, policymakers have occasionally adopted the ideas, with mixed results.