The Behavioural Proposal

• What: A group project due at the end of the semester (35% of grade, groups TBD).
• Objective: use behavioural economics to find ways of improving our communities through public policies or business practices.
• Deliverables: (a) report, and (b) group presentation.

Report is a slide deck, no explicit page limit.
Presentations will likely be 15 minutes per group.

What a successful project will do:

• Identify an important social or a business problem.
• Demonstrate how a behavioural theory can explain the problem.
• Provide a solution that could feasibly fix the problem with behavioural principles.
• Communicate the expected improvements that result from the proposed policy being implemented.

The big ideas will be in the presentation, the details will be in the report.

See the syllabus for additional details (and chat with me).

Advice for the proposal.

• Pick a topic you're passionate about!
• Reach out to me early and often with your ideas/progress.

My hope for each of you.

• Feel empowered to use behavioural theory on your journey of making the world a better place.

What is the central problem Chammat and Giraud must solve in this case?

Generally speaking, who are the key stakeholders across public policy projects?

In an ideal world, how would a public policy project serve its stakeholders?

Libertarian Paternalism

A process in which a Choice Architect designs an economic environment with the explicit intent of helping individuals who make suboptimal decisions (as judged by themselves), while forbidding no option and leaving economic incentives largely unchanged.

The design delivers large benefits to those who err while imposing little or no cost on those whose behaviour is already optimal (as judged by themselves).

Libertarian Paternalism is an oxymoron.

What is the inherent tension embedded in this philosophy to public policy?

Do you believe government should put equal weight on both aspects of Libertarian Paternalism?

How would you evaluate whether a nudge actually respects personal liberties?

Let's change the context.

Now suppose Chammat and Giraud are consulting for a company that is developing a product or service for a particular bias. Generally speaking, who are the key stakeholders across such market-based projects?

Generally speaking, how would a market-based project serve its stakeholders?

What might we consider when evaluating whether a problem is likely to be served better by a market-based solution or by a public solution?

Assignment Questions

1. What are the primary objectives of the initiative?
2. What types of tools will your team likely want to have access to for the initiative?
3. What challenges is the behavioural team likely to face with the initiative?
4. What does success look like? How is it communicated with the general public?

Discussion Groups

This will be a semester-long process.

• Keep thinking and exploring new project ideas.
• Use the library of biases we develop as fuel.
• And have fun!