La racionalidad en las decisiones

Hoy he leído un artículo de New Yorker, que en realidad es una reseña de un par de nuevos libros de Ariely y de Thaler y Sunstein, respectivamente. Como casi todas las cosas serias relacionadas con behavioral economics, ha parecido muy interesante, y muy relacionado con algunas cosas que ya he puesto en el blog.

According to standard economic theory, the U.S. savings rate also represents rational choice: Americans, having reviewed their options, have collectively resolved to spend virtually all the money that they have. According to behavioral economists, the low savings rate has a more immediate explanation: it proves—yet again—that people have trouble acting in their own best interests. It’s worth noting that Americans, even as they continue to spend, say that they should be putting more money away; one study of participants in 401(k) plans found that more than two-thirds believed their savings rate to be “too low.”

Lo interesante de ésta es que parece difícil atacar la hipótesis de una baja tasa de descuento basándose en las tasas reales de ahorro. Nordhaus, por ejemplo, cuando justifica sus análisis económicos del cambio climático, dice que una tasa baja de descuento es incompatible con las tasas de ahorro reales. Según lo que acabamos de leer, ¿tiene esto que decir entonces que debemos considerar como racionales las tasas de descuento reales?¿Debemos considerarlas como deseables? Quizá estos debieran ser los aspectos a debatir cuando se analiza el trabajo de Nordhaus o Weitzman, de los que ya hablé en un post pasado.

In the forthcoming “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” (Yale; $25), Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein follow behavioral economics out of the realm of experiment and into the realm of social policy. Thaler and Sunstein both teach at the University of Chicago, Thaler in the graduate school of business and Sunstein at the law school. They share with Ariely the belief that, faced with certain options, people will consistently make the wrong choice.Therefore, they argue, people should be offered options that work with, rather than against, their unreasoning tendencies. These foolish-proof choices they label “nudges.” (A “nudge,” they note with scholarly care, should not be confused with a “noodge.”)

A typical “nudge” is a scheme that Thaler and Sunstein call “Save More Tomorrow.” One of the reasons people have such a hard time putting money away, the authors say, is that they are loss-averse. They are pained by any reduction in their take-home pay—even when it’s going toward their own retirement. Under “Save More Tomorrow,” employees commit to contributing a greater proportion of their paychecks to their retirement over time, but the increases are scheduled to coincide with their annual raises, so their paychecks never shrink. (The “Save More Tomorrow” scheme was developed by Thaler and the U.C.L.A. economist Shlomo Benartzi, back in 1996, and has already been implemented by several thousand retirement plans.)

Many of the suggestions in “Nudge” seem like good ideas, and even, as with “Save More Tomorrow,” practical ones. The whole project, though, as Thaler and Sunstein acknowledge, raises some pretty awkward questions. If the “nudgee” can’t be depended on to recognize his own best interests, why stop at a nudge? Why not offer a “push,” or perhaps even a “shove”? And if people can’t be trusted to make the right choices for themselves how can they possibly be trusted to make the right decisions for the rest of us?

Un asunto apasionante: ¿debemos regular para agentes racionales, o para agentes reales? Es decir, ¿debemos tener en cuenta nuestras debilidades e irracionalidades? Como bien dicen en la reseña, esto podría llegar incluso a un régimen de intervención pública rayano en lo dictatorial, así que uno más bien se inclina por lo contrario. Pero ejemplos como los propuestos por Thaler y Sunstein tienen bastante sentido común (otro famoso es el del opt-out para los planes de pensiones en EEUU).

Y finalmente, la conclusión me parece brillante. Da gusto ver cómo hay gente que es capaz de poner en palabras de manera elegante algo que uno ve, pero que no expresa igual de bien...

If there is any consolation to take from behavioral economics—and this impulse itself probably counts as irrational—it is that irrationality is not always altogether a bad thing.[...]. People, it turns out, want to be generous and they want to retain their dignity—even when it doesn’t really make sense.