Políticas Públicas y Economía del Comportamiento (Nudge)

Una de las derivaciones prácticas de la Economía del comportamiento (BE) se encuentra expresada en lo que Thaler y Sunstein denominan políticas "nudge" en su libro de 2008 Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Incluso hacen referencia a un "paternalismo libertariano" (que otro día discutiré). Lo interesante es que estas sugerencias están siendo adoptadas de manera relativamente rápida en algunos gobiernos, como en el Reino Unido, el cual creo una unidad de inteligencia "nudge" y recientemente por el gobierno de Obama.

Informing Consumers through Smart Disclosure
Today the White House and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), with support from ideas42, will host a summit on Smart Disclosure – a new tool that helps provide consumers with greater access to the information they need to make informed choices.

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The Administration has also committed to promoting the use of Smart Disclosure in its Open Government Partnership National Action Plan, and in announcing the National Action Plan, the President specifically referred to Smart Disclosure. The National Science and Technology Council has established a task force dedicated to promoting better disclosure policies. And over the next year, departments and agencies will work to expand the use of Smart Disclosure to help consumers make more informed decisions in numerous domains.

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Sin embargo, también existen aún dudas y posiciones críticas y en este post de Conversable Economits, de manera seria y clara, expone sus dudas en cuanto al tema de regulación

Behavioral Economics and Regulation

Back in 2008, Cass R. Sunstein wrote a book with Richard Thaler called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. The focus of the book was to discuss how to take findings from behavioral economics and apply them to affecting behavior. Thus, since President Obama appointed Sunstein to be the Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, there has been considerable interest to see how he might put this approach into effect. In the Fall 2011 issue of the University of Chicago Law Review, Sunstein, has written "Empirically Informed Regulation," which discusses his approach and a selection of the policy results

Por cierto, en este mismo post se reconoce que

The work on how people's savings patterns are affected by whether they face a default rule seems to me the shining success of behavioral economics as applied to policy. It addresses an issue of first-order importance that cuts across macroeconomics, microeconomics, and social policy: Why do so many people save so little?

tema de mi actual agenda de investigación!!!