A Laboratory Study of Nudge with Retirement Savings
A Laboratory Study of Nudge with Retirement Savings
7 July, 2020 •Similar Articles
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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.