Optimal Defaults and Active Decisions

Gabriel D. Carroll, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian, Andrew Metrick

NBER Working Paper No. 11074
Issued in January 2005

---- Acknowledgements -----

We thank Hewitt Associates for their help in providing the data. We are particularly grateful to Lori Lucas, Jim McGhee, Scott Peterson, Deborah Bonus, and Yan Xu, some of our many contacts at Hewitt. We also appreciate many helpful conversations with Harlan Fleece and the exceptional research assistance of Nelson Uhan, Jared Gross, John Friedman, Hongyi Li, Laura Serban, Keith Ericson, Ben Grossman, and Fuad Faridi. Richard Thaler, Mark Iwry, Shlomo Benartzi, Annamaria Lusardi, and seminar participants at the University of Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Cornell, USC, LSE, Wharton, Dartmouth, Stanford, the New York Federal Reserve, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the NBER have provided much useful feedback. Choi acknowledges financial support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Mustard Seed Foundation. Choi, Laibson, and Madrian acknowledge individual and collective financial support from the National Institute on Aging (grants R01-AG-16605, R29-AG-013020, and T32-AG00186). Laibson also acknowledges financial support from the Sloan Foundation.

return to bibliography page