TY  - JOUR
AU  - Caplin,Andrew
AU  - Martin,Daniel J.
TI  - Defaults and Attention: The Drop Out Effect
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17988
PY  - 2012
Y2  - April 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17988
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17988.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Andrew Caplin
Department of Economics
New York University
19 W. 4th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY  10012
Tel: 212/998-8950
Fax: 212/995-3932
E-Mail: andrew.caplin@nyu.edu

Daniel J. Martin
Department of Economics
New York University
19 W. 4th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY  10012
E-Mail: daniel.martin@nyu.edu
AB  - When choice options are complex, policy makers may seek to reduce decision making errors by making a high quality option the default. We show that this positive effect is at risk because such a policy creates incentives for decision makers to "drop out" by paying no attention to the decision and accepting the default sight unseen. Using decision time as a proxy for attention, we confirm the importance of this effect in an experimental setting. A key challenge for policy makers is to measure, and if possible mitigate, such drop out behavior in the field.
ER  -