Good Ethics and Bad Choices: The Relevance of Behavioral Economics for Medical Ethics

An analysis of how findings in behavioral economics challenge fundamental assumptions of medical ethics, integrating the latest research in both fields.

Bioethicists have long argued for rational persuasion to help patients with medical decisions. But the findings of behavioral economics—popularized in Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge and other books—show that arguments depending on rational thinking are unlikely to be successful and even that the idea of purely rational persuasion may be a ficti...