The economist who launched David Cameron’s “nudge unit”, set up to find new ways of gently influencing public behaviour, has won this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics.
Professor Richard Thaler, of the University of Chicago, co-wrote global best-seller Nudge which served as a template for the unit, designed to subtly persuade people to make positive choices.
The 2012 introduction of auto-enrolment for private pensions, where people have to opt out rather than opt in, is considered an example of a successful nudge policy.
Last year, Prof Thaler suggested that Brexit was an example of large numbers of people making a decision not based on economic self-interest: “like a divorce without a pre-nup”.
He will receive nine million Swedish krona (£840,000) from the committee. “I will try to spend it as irrationally as possible,” the 72 year-old economist said.
