IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bpubpo/v6y2022i4p654-673_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sludge Audits

Author

Listed:
  • SUNSTEIN, CASS R.

Abstract

Consumers, employees, students and others are often subjected to ‘sludge’: excessive or unjustified frictions, such as paperwork burdens, that cost time or money; that may make life difficult to navigate; that may be frustrating, stigmatizing or humiliating; and that might end up depriving people of access to important goods, opportunities and services. Because of behavioral biases and cognitive scarcity, sludge can have much more harmful effects than private and public institutions anticipate. To protect consumers, investors, employees and others, firms and private and public institutions should regularly conduct Sludge Audits to catalogue the costs of sludge and to decide when and how to reduce it. Sludge often has costs far in excess of benefits, and it can hurt the most vulnerable members of society.

Suggested Citation

  • Sunstein, Cass R., 2022. "Sludge Audits," Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(4), pages 654-673, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bpubpo:v:6:y:2022:i:4:p:654-673_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2398063X19000320/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:bpubpo:v:6:y:2022:i:4:p:654-673_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bpp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.