‘Better off, as judged by themselves’: a reply to Cass Sunstein

Abstract

This paper is a reply to Sunstein’s comment on my paper ‘Do people really want to be nudged towards healthy lifestyles?’ The central claim of that paper was that, in their book Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein switch between two different interpretations of the ‘better off, as judged by themselves’ criterion, and that consistent use of one or other interpretation would have blunted the persuasive power of the book. In this reply, I defend that claim against Sunstein’s counter-arguments.