A Critical Review on the Book “Nudge; Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness”

Nudge introduces libertarian paternalism approach through empirical evidence on the behavioral biases in decision making and the impact of environment on them. The libertarian paternalism approach, which is called nudge, is any aspect of choice architecturing that changes people’s behavior in a predictable way without changing any options, hence, retaining individuals’ freedom of choice. Because there is no neutral context, the authors argue that paternalism is inevitable. In such a situation, public policy can nudge people towards making better decisions that are also superior in the future. The authors suggest that experts should be hired to make sensible choices. In addition to problems of adverse selections by experts, the main challenge of libertarian paternalism is unstable preferences and inevitable choice between desirable outcomes in long run over short run. In the light of enormous amounts of attention absorbed by the Nudge that is apparent in several translations in Farsi, this paper tries to review and scrutinize the libertarian paternalism approach.