Fantastic short piece on nudges and shoves!

Here is a superb short piece from Jonah Lehrer on aspects of behavioural economics and in particular, the sue of nudges to control calorie consumption in restaurants and to get us to use less energy in our homes. The law of unintended consequences makes a guest appearance - compulsory calorie information on menus in New York City have seen calorific consumption edge higher over five years. Data on relative energy consumption within a neighbourhood have shown only marginal gains in energy efficiency. There is a superb phrase in the piece - “the nudges of policy makers must compete against the nudges of the marketplace…Sometimes, we don’t need a nudge. We need a shove”.

A hat tip to Tim Harford for flagging up the article on his Twitter page - and a reminder that I regard Tim’s new book “Adapt” as one of the must-reads this summer. It is a tremendous book for economics students - reviewed here.