David Laibson
Economist whose name appears on both halves of this site's coverage: how choice environments help people, and how they are used to extract from them.
Who they are
Laibson works at Harvard on behavioural economics, self-control and household finance. He co-authored the shrouded attributes analysis and, separately, the active decisions work on pension enrolment.
Key papers
Gabaix, X., & Laibson, D. (2006). Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(2), 505-540.
Carroll, G. D., Choi, J. J., Laibson, D., Madrian, B. C., & Metrick, A. (2009). Optimal defaults and active decisions. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Key ideas
Shrouding part of a price can be a stable market outcome where some consumers are inattentive.
Requiring an explicit choice, with no default at all, raised pension enrolment by twenty-eight percentage points against standard opt-in.
The same discipline produces both findings, which is worth noticing when either is quoted in isolation.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1162/qjec.2006.121.2.505
- doi:10.1162/qjec.2009.124.4.1639