Having recently read Nudge and Sludge, this New Yorker article on self-storage was particularly interesting. Annual r...

Having recently read Nudge and Sludge, this New Yorker article on self-storage was particularly interesting. Annual revenues are estimated to be more than forty billion dollars. […] Last year, two professors from Stanford and one from Texas A. & M. published a paper in the American Economic Review in which they conclude, based on transaction data from a large payment-card network, that “cancellation frictions roughly double seller revenues on average.” […] Cancellation frictions are a boon to the self-storage industry. The annoying, time-consuming, and often expensive chore of emptying a junk-filled storage unit is easy to postpone for a month, and then for one more, especially if an unnerving paper bill never arrives. The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities, by David Owen It is a fascinating scenario where a lot of the sludge is self-imposed, i.e. the inertia powerful – whereas the vendors make it very easy to, well, just leave it be, not change anything.

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