Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/296158 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 11069
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We study the effects of two widely observed behavioral policy interventions⸻the simplification of complex decisions and the implementation of high-quality defaults. Based on a laboratory experiment featuring a dual-task paradigm, we demonstrate that these policies do not only improve decisions in the targeted choice domain, but also yield substantial positive indirect effects on non-targeted decisions. The latter emerge as a result of an attention-releasing effect of the policies. Furthermore, the relative importance of the direct and indirect effects varies systematically across the population. Evaluations that focus only on the targeted domain may therefore significantly underestimate the overall effectiveness of attention-releasing policies and provide a biased assessment of their distributional consequences.
Subjects: 
administrative burden
limited attention
defaults
nudges
limited cognitive resources
behavioral economics
laboratory experiment
JEL: 
D91
D01
D04
C91
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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