A Laboratory Study of Nudge with Retirement Savings
A Laboratory Study of Nudge with Retirement Savings
7 July, 2020 •Similar Articles
Social capital and savings behavior of the poor: evidence from the field
Two thousand and fifty six Senegalese clients of a Microfinance Institution (MFI) participated in
the experiment during four months. They wer...
Informing and Improving Retirement Saving Performance using Behavioural Economics Theory-driven User Interfaces
Can human-computer interaction help people make informed and effective decisions about their retirement savings? We applied the behavioral economic...
The Cost of Convenience? Transaction Costs, Bargaining Power, and Savings Account Use in Kenya
Individuals across the world often use high-transaction-cost savings devices, even when lower-cost technologies are available. I study this phenome...
We report results from an on-line economics experiment that examines the effect of nudging
retirement savings decisions. In the experiments, participants make decisions in a finitely
repeated retirement savings game, in which income during working years is uncertain, and
retirement age is known. Participants, who are household financial decision-makers, are nudged
with automatic savings in each period of the game. We find that that the nudge simply replaced
natural decision-making observed in the absence of a nudge in this experiment, even to the
extent that it resulted in nearly identical inferred decision rules. This surprising result highlights
the unpredictability of the effect of nudging human behavior.