When should we nudge and when should we shove, I think, it's a political judgment. Obviously in some situations we need shoves, we need laws. Fraud is against the law, murder is against the law, drunk-driving is against the law. We don't need just nudges.

Every American worker should be able to save for retirement via payroll deductions.

Why tie to gold? Why not 1982 Bordeaux?

If rather than setting the minimum balance as the lowest possible amount, so we keep people in debt for as long as possible, we raise the minimum payment and encourage people to pay off their credit cards, we're going to make less money, but we're going to have costumers that are more solvent.

When an economist says the evidence is "mixed," he or she means that theory says one thing and data says the opposite.

There's a second component of a good savings plan, which is something that a colleague of mine called Schlomo Benartzi and I developed many years ago, that we call "save more tomorrow."

Credit cards have been extremely profitable to banks. They're profitable not from the fees they collect from the retailers that use the credit cards, that pays the bills, but the real profits come from the interest payments and the charges to users that are unexpected.