I recently purchased and read two Cass Sunstein (Harvard) books: Simpler: The Future of Government and Wiser: Getting Beyond GroupThink to Make Groups Smarter (with Reid Hastie (Chicago))

Cass Sunstein is a enjoyable writer to read, and Simpler was an easy, relatively short read (though he admits that his editor prompted the cutting of 30,000 words from the original manuscript). I may do a separate post on Wiser at a later date.

Simpler provides an inside look at Cass Sunstein's time at the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ("OIRA") from 2009-2012. Supposedly, OIRA was created by the Paperwork Reduction Act in 1980. OIRA plays an important role in overseeing federal regulation.

A few random thoughts about Simpler:

  • If you have read Sunstein's earlier work, Kahneman (Princeton), and Ariely (Duke) much of Simpler will be familiar behavioral economics;
  • Sunstein's political confirmation process sounds absolutely awful. I wonder how many qualified potential civil servants are scared away by processes like this;
  • The Food Plate (below) is much simpler than the Food Pyramid I grew up with;
  • Sunstein reminded me that sometimes rule-makers (including professors – e.g. with our syllabi) can become experts in rule systems, and not realize how complex their rules may seem to outsiders;
  • The impact of the complex regulation is felt by many, including by small businesses (and by all of us during tax season); 
  • Sunstein admits that there is a tenancy to regulate from hunches, anecdotes, and to please (or not upset) special interests, but he claims he tried to favor statistics, cost-benefit analysis, randomize controlled trials, and public comments;
  • Government has a long way to go before it gets "simple." Sunstein's biggest challenge was explaining the ACA and Dodd-Frank in the context of this book; I don't think he rose to this challenge and he did not even try very hard. He pointed to a few simple parts of the complex laws, but then concluded by saying "Rome was not built in a day."

Food Plate

For those who are interested, Cass Sunstein's talk on Simpler at University of Chicago is here.