Cass Sunstein

Who they are

Harvard Law School's faculty page states that he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2009 to 2012. His work on sludge draws on that role, since much of it concerns the paperwork burdens that governments place on the people they serve.

This page records only what the published works and Harvard's faculty page state. Biography beyond that is not given here.

Key papers

Sludge audits (Behavioural Public Policy, published online January 2020; issue of 2022). The paper describes sludge as excessive or unjustified friction, such as paperwork burdens, that costs people time or money and can be frustrating or humiliating. It argues that behavioural biases and cognitive scarcity can make such friction far more harmful than institutions expect, and proposes that firms and governments run regular Sludge Audits to catalogue these costs and decide which to reduce. It argues that sludge often costs more than it delivers and can fall hardest on the most vulnerable.

Sludge (MIT Press, 2021). The book examines administrative red tape, from complicated online forms to long queues, and argues that it can harm health, slow growth, deepen poverty and widen inequality, and that people who meet it often give up on visas, jobs, permits, education or care. It also considers when some friction is justified.

Nudge: The Final Edition (with Richard Thaler, 2021). Chapter eight, "#Sludge", defines sludge as friction that makes it harder for people to obtain an outcome that will make them better off by their own lights, and calls on every organisation to remove unnecessary sludge.

Key ideas

The central idea is that friction has a direction. A pause that protects someone from a costly mistake can be worth its cost, while friction that stands between people and something they want, such as leaving a subscription or claiming a benefit, is a real cost that rarely appears in anyone's accounts. A sludge audit is the tool for making those costs visible.

---