Showing results by author "Cass R. Sunstein" in All Categories

Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 200 "nudge units" in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioral scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful "choice architecture" - a concept the authors invented - to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society.

We live in an era of tribalism, polarization, and intense social division - separating people along lines of religion, political conviction, race, ethnicity, and sometimes gender. How did this happen? In Conformity, Cass R. Sunstein argues that the key to making sense of living in this fractured world lies in understanding the idea of conformity - what it is and how it works - as well as the countervailing force of dissent.

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

We like to think we make decisions based on good reasoning–and that our doctors, judges, politicians, economic forecasters and employers do too. In this groundbreaking book, three world-leading behavioural scientists come together to assess the last great fault in our collective decision-making: noise. We all make bad judgements more than we think. Noise shows us what we can do to make better ones.

We've all had to fight our way through administrative sludge-filling out complicated online forms, mailing in paperwork, standing in line at the motor vehicle registry. This kind of red tape is a nuisance, but, as Cass Sunstein shows in Sludge, it can also also impair health, reduce growth, entrench poverty, and exacerbate inequality.

Have you ever noticed that what is thrilling on Monday tends to become boring on Friday? Even exciting relationships, stimulating jobs, and breathtaking works of art lose their sparkle after a while. People stop noticing what is most wonderful in their own lives. They also stop noticing what is terrible. They stay in abusive relationships. People grow to accept authoritarianism and take foolish risks. They become unconcerned by their own misconduct, blind to inequality, and are more liable to believe misinformation than ever before. But what if we could find a way to see everything anew?

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes can make us poor and unhealthy. We often make bad decisions about education, personal finance, health care, family, and the environment.

It's hard to imagine our world without its stars and celebrity geniuses—they become a part of our culture and history, seeming permanent and preordained. But as Cass Sunstein shows in this startling book, that is far from the case. Focusing on both famous and forgotten (or simply overlooked) artists and luminaries in music, literature, business, science, politics, and other fields, he explores why some individuals become famous and others don't, and offers a new understanding of the role of greatness, luck, and contingency in the achievement of fame.

A deeply original celebration of George Lucas' masterpiece as it relates to history, presidential politics, law, economics, fatherhood, and culture by a Harvard legal scholar and former White House advisor.

Based on a series of pathbreaking lectures given at Yale University in 2012, this powerful, thought-provoking work by national best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein combines legal theory with behavioral economics to make a fresh argument about the legitimate scope of government, bearing on obesity, smoking, distracted driving, health care, food safety, and other highly volatile, high-profile public issues.

The different ways that social change happens, from unleashing to nudging to social cascades. How does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Sexual harassment was once something that women had to endure; now a movement has risen up against it. White nationalist sentiments, on the other hand, were largely kept out of mainstream discourse; now there is no shortage of media outlets for them. In this book, with the help of behavioral economics, psychology and other fields, Cass Sunstein casts a bright new light on how change happens.

The U.S. Supreme Court has eliminated the right to abortion and is revisiting other fundamental questions today—about voting rights, affirmative action, gun laws, and much more. Once-arcane theories of constitutional interpretation are profoundly affecting the lives of all Americans. In this brief and urgent book, Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein provides a lively introduction to competing approaches to interpreting the Constitution—and argues that the only way to choose one is to ask whether it would change American life for the better or worse.

Lying has been with us from time immemorial. Yet today is different - and in many respects worse. All over the world, people are circulating damaging lies, and these falsehoods are amplified as never before through powerful social media platforms that reach billions. Liars are saying that COVID-19 is a hoax. They are claiming that vaccines cause autism. In the face of those problems, the renowned legal scholar Cass Sunstein probes the fundamental question of how we can deter lies while also protecting freedom of speech.

Der neue Bestseller von Nobelpreisträger Daniel Kahneman. Warum treffen wir, je nach Umständen, völlig unterschiedliche Entscheidungen auf ein und derselben Faktengrundlage? Wieso kommen zwei Experten, die über identische Informationen verfügen, zu komplett anderen Schlussfolgerungen? Zusammen mit Cass Sunstein und Olivier Sibony präsentiert Daniel Kahneman die Vielzahl von oft zufälligen Faktoren, die unsere Entscheidungsfindung stören und häufig negativ beeinflussen - sie sind im Begriff "Noise" zusammengefasst.

En Un pequeño empujón, considerado ya un clásico y uno de los mejores libros sobre economía y política de las últimas décadas, Cass R. Sunstein y Richard H. Thaler, premio Nobel de Economía, observan cómo nuestras percepciones y decisiones dependen del modo en que se organizan ante nosotros las diferentes opciones. Gobiernos y empresas, pero también padres, profesores y médicos, se convierten así en una especie de «arquitectos de la elección».

Dos médicos en la misma ciudad pueden dar diagnósticos diferentes a pacientes idénticos; dos jueces pueden dictar sentencias distintas ante delitos similares; nosotros mismos podemos decidir una cosa u otra según sea por la mañana o por la tarde, o según se acerque o no la hora de comer. Estos son ejemplos de ruido: el sesgo que conlleva variabilidad en juicios que deberían ser iguales.

In this pathbreaking book, New York Times best-selling author Cass Sunstein asks us to rethink freedom. He reveals that freedom of choice isn't nearly enough. To be free, we must also be able to navigate life. Accessible and lively and drawing on perspectives from the humanities, religion, and the arts, as well as social science and the law, On Freedom explores a crucial dimension of the human condition that philosophers and economists have long missed - and reveals what it would take to make freedom real.

All over the world, public officials are using the behavioral sciences to protect the environment, promote employment and economic growth, reduce poverty, and increase national security. In this book, Cass R. Sunstein, breaks new ground with a deep yet highly listenable investigation into the ethical issues surrounding nudges, choice architecture and mandates, addressing such issues as welfare, autonomy, self-government, dignity, manipulation and the constraints and responsibilities of an ethical state.

Is the modern administrative state illegitimate? Unconstitutional? Unaccountable? Dangerous? Intolerable? American public law has long been riven by a persistent, serious conflict, a kind of low-grade cold war, over these questions. Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue that the administrative state can be redeemed, as long as public officials are constrained by what they call the morality of administrative law. Law and Leviathan elaborates a number of principles that underlie this moral regime.

Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the "maximin rule", which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of "Knightian uncertainty", found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes.