Paper Behaviorally Informed Policies for Household Financial Decision-Making

Low incomes, limited financial literacy, fraud, and deception are just a few of the many intractable economic and social factors that contribute to the financial difficulties that households face today. Addressing these issues directly is difficult and costly. But poor financial outcomes also result from systematic psychological tendencies, including imperfect optimization, biased judgments and preferences, and susceptibility to influence by the actions and opinions of others. Some of these psychological tendencies and the problems they cause may be countered by policies and interventions that are both low cost and scalable. We detail the ways that these behavioral factors contribute to consumers' financial mistakes and suggest a set of interventions that the federal government, in its dual roles as regulator and employer, could feasibly test or implement to improve household financial outcomes in a variety of domains: retirement, short-term savings, debt management, the take-up of government benefits, and tax optimization.

Published in: Behavioral Science & Policy

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• Authored by Brigitte C. Madrian Hal E. Hershfield Abigail Sussman Saurabh Bhargava Jeremy Burke Scott A. Huettel Julian Jamison Eric J. Johnson John G. Lynch Stephan Meier Scott Rick Suzanne B. Shu
• 2017
• Financial Inclusion