When an economist says the evidence is "mixed," he or she means that theory says one thing and data says the opposite.
Richard Thalerhe card companies will often, as a courtesy, honor that credit card, but hit you with a penalty. And you keep swiping your card for $3 at Starbucks for your lattรฉ, and you're getting hit with a $25 penalty because it's over your credit limit.
Richard ThalerSo the world is much more correlated than we give credit to. And so we see more of what Nassim Taleb calls "black swan events" - rare events happen more often than they should because the world is more correlated.
Richard ThalerThe money has to be deferred with what they call "clawback," which means they can get it back if I lose it all. So that guy making ten million a year selling credit default swaps, if we're going to keep five million of it in escrow for ten years, and with the right to go back and get it, if he starts losing money, then we're going to give people the right incentives not too take so much risk.
Richard ThalerIn a typical 401k plan, when you first become eligible you get a big pile of forms and you're told, fill out these forms if you want to join. Tell us how much amount you've saved and how you want to invest the money. In, under automatic enrollment you get that same pile of forms but the top page says, if you don't fill out these forms, we're going to enroll you anyway and we're going to enroll you at this saving rate and in these investments.
Richard Thaler