People exaggerate their own skills. they are optimistic about their prospects and overconfident about their guesses, including which managers to pick.

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

My mantra is if you want to help people accomplish some goal, make it easy.

Most economists, including me, agree that longevity insurance would make sense for a lot of people.

So, what's a nudge? A nudge is some small feature of the environment that attracts our attention and alters our behavior.

Retirement savings is probably behavioral economists' greatest success story. It is a prototypical behavioral-economics problem because saving for retirement is cognitively hard - figuring out how much to save - and requires self-control.

It would be much more consumer friendly for them to beep you when you swipe your card that says, uh-oh you're over your limit, are you sure you want to use that?