Gabriel Carroll
Economist. First author of the 2009 paper on optimal defaults and active decisions, which tested the arrangement with no default at all.
Who they are
Carroll works on decision theory and mechanism design. The 2009 paper, written with James Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian and Andrew Metrick, asked what happens when an employer refuses to set a default and instead requires every new hire to make an explicit choice.
It is the least quoted result in this literature and arguably the most useful.
Key papers
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
Requiring an active decision raised initial enrolment by twenty-eight percentage points against standard opt-in, and produced after three months a savings distribution that opt-in took thirty months to reach.
The paper's model says when each regime wins. Active choice suits populations who procrastinate heavily and want different things from each other. Automatic enrolment suits populations who do not understand the decision.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1162/qjec.2009.124.4.1639