Everyone's lost a lot of money on their 401k plans. I've heard some people calling them 201k plans. So it's even more important to get people to be saving more for retirement. Behavioral economics has helped us learn a lot about how to do that.

I'm all for empowerment and education, but the empirical evidence is that it doesn't work. That's why I say make it easy.

Most people start claiming benefits within a year of when they become eligible, although benefits increase substantially if they wait.

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.

Investors must keep in mind that there's a difference between a good company and a good stock. After all, you can buy a good car but pay too much for it.

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

I think one lesson we have to learn is that there's a lot more risk than we're giving credit to, a lot more what economist calls systematic risk.