The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy

By Eldar Shafir. 2013

394 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In recent years, remarkable progress has been made in behavioral research on a wide variety of topics, from behavioral finance, labor contracts, philanthropy, and the analysis of savings and poverty, to eyewitness identification and sentencing decisions, racism, sexism, health behaviors, and voting. Research findings have often been strikingly counterintuitive, with serious implications for public policymaking. In this book, leading experts in psychology, decision research, policy analysis, economics, political science, law, medicine, and philosophy explore major trends, principles, and general insights about human behavior in policy-relevant settings. Their work provides a deeper understanding of the many drivers--cognitive, social, perceptual, motivational, and emotional--that guide behaviors in everyday settings. They give depth and insight into the methods of behavioral research, and highlight how this knowledge might influence the implementation of public policy for the improvement of society. This collection examines the policy relevance of behavioral science to our social and political lives, to issues ranging from health, environment, and nutrition, to dispute resolution, implicit racism, and false convictions. The book illuminates the relationship between behavioral findings and economic analyses, and calls attention to what policymakers might learn from this vast body of groundbreaking work. Wide-ranging investigation into people's motivations, abilities, attitudes, and perceptions finds that they differ in profound ways from what is typically assumed. The result is that public policy acquires even greater significance, since rather than merely facilitating the conduct of human affairs, policy actually shapes their trajectory.

Subfields: Gender Studies, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f07583fa0bf5903cc00b0c2c114b293f769dbbd2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Gender Studies

1. A. Kalil
2. Jan M. Bauer
3. L. Reisch
4. B. Burnes
5. L. Gennetian
6. Michael Howlett
7. G. Capano
8. Joya Misra

In General Decision Sciences

1. A. Kalil
2. L. Reisch
3. Jan M. Bauer
4. B. Burnes
5. Jack B. Soll
6. John W. Payne
7. L. Gennetian
8. Michael Howlett

Citations in the corpus

• Department Conditions and Practices Associated with Faculty Workload Satisfaction and Perceptions of Equity (2019, background): “Perceptions of equity are subjective, department leaders often lack data to make informed decisions, and individuals are inherently bad estimators of their own and others’ contributions (Thaler et al., 2013).”
• The Origins of Lewin’s Three-Step Model of Change (2020, background): “Indeed, such has been the breadth of its influence that the Nobel Prize–winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman (2013) commented that “the recognition of the huge power of situation, context, priming, and construal is common ground.”
• Behavioural Insights and (Un)healthy Dietary Choices: a Review of Current Evidence (2018, methodology): “In Behavioural Public Policy (BPP) (e.g., Shafir 2013), a nudge is defined “as any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.”
• Behavioural science and policy: where are we now and where are we going? (2018, background): “Several edited volumes on the topic are either in circulation or in press (Oliver, 2013; Shafir, 2013; Pykett et al., 2017).”
• Like ripples on a pond: behavioral spillovers and their implications for research and policy (2015, neutral): “Policymakers have begun taking seriously the results of behavioral research (Camerer, 1999; Camerer, Issacharoff, Loewenstein, O’Donoghue, & Rabin, 2003; Congdon, Kling, & Mullainathan, 2011; Dolan et al., 2011; Shafir, 2012; Sunstein, 2011; Thaler & Sunstein, 2003).”
• THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY IN THE CONTEXT OF FINANCIAL INSTABILITY: A BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE (2015, background): “These case studies complement deeper investigations that explore the implications of cognitive and behavioral limitations for program and policy design (Congdon, Kling, & Mullainathan, 2011; Shafir, 2012; Thaler & Sunstein, 2009).”
• Inequality begins at home: The role of parenting in the diverging destinies of rich and poor children. (2015, positive): “Parents’ focus and energy needed to meet the demands of today leaves little room to follow through on decisions that can affect the future of their children (Mani et al., 2013; Mullainathan & Shafir, 2013; Shah, Mullainathan & Shafir, 2012).”
• A User's Guide to Debiasing (2014, background): “Moreover, there is also the challenge of measuring success, especially when people have heterogeneous preferences (see Ubel, 2012, for a thought‐provoking discussion of possible criteria for measuring success).”
• Causal logics and mechanisms in policy design: How and why adopting a mechanistic perspective can improve policy design (2019, background): “As Strassheim (this special issue) has observed, in recent years, under the sway of behavioural economists and others, however, many works dealing with ‘system 2’ or automatic less ‘rational’ motivations and cognitive strategies have increasingly been added to this design and policy-making lexicon (”