Resumen de Smarter information, Smarter Consumers
A potent mix of modern technology and new government policy is about to transform disclosure-and with it the workings of many parts of the economy, say Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago and Will Tucker of ideas42. Increasingly, government-owned data and private-company disclosures will be made available in machine-readable formats, spurring growth of new services the authors call "choice engines"-technologies that interpret this data. Choice engines have already made significant inroads in revolutionizing markets. Consider the travel industry and websites such as Expedia and Travelocity that allow customers to bypass travel agents and quickly search for and purchase flights and hotels. And travel sites are just the beginning. Not sure whether you should buy a laptop now or wait until prices drop? Go to Decide.com. Worried that an unwanted subscription will automatically renew? Sign up for BillGuard, a service that monitors your bank and credit card statements and sends you alerts about recurring charges. Want to lower your household energy consumption? Check out your personal usage patterns through the industry-led Green Button initiative. Have a family member allergic to gluten? Get a choice engine to use your shopping history to analyze food purchases and highlight items to avoid. If this sounds too good-or scary-to be true, look at the history of GPS, the now ubiquitous global positioning system. When the U.S. government ordered the military to stop scrambling select data from Department of Defense satellites, in 2000, making the data freely available to the public, entrepreneurs quickly took over. GPS innovation has been a disaster for companies that sell maps on paper, but for consumers and the economy as a whole, it's been a boon. According to recent estimates, GPS added $90 billion in value to the U.S. economy just in 2011. The rise of choice engines, say the authors, will have an even greater, more transformative effect on the economy and on consumers' lives.
