Why read Sludge?

Book cover of Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It

Book description

The New York Times–bestselling author of Nudge reveals how we became so burdened by red tape and unnecessary paperwork—and why we must do better.

“If nudges have a mortal enemy, or perhaps the equivalent of antimatter to matter, it’s ‘sludge’.” —Forbes

We’ve all had to fight our way through administrative…

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Behavioral economics

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Why read it?

1 author picked Sludge as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Enrico G. De Giorgi

Author

As a mathematician, I learned that constraints could push us away from optimality. Well, we still seek for optimality, but under constraints we can only be worse off than without. Reading this book, I learned that our life has plenty of unnecessary constraints that Prof. Sunstein calls sludge.

This book was a revelation because I was always tempted to consider misbehavior as a lack of judgment, self-control, etc. However, this book gave me a different perspective. Maybe as human beings, we strive for optimality, but the many constraints out there do not always allow us to act like a Homo…

From Enrico's list on diving into the next generation of behavioral finance.