The Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy studies a range of issues at the intersection of behavioral economics, law, and public policy. The issues include energy, health, obesity, highway safety, economic growth, finance, the environment (including climate change), savings, uses of social media, human rights, education, discrimination, and poverty. A particular emphasis is on behaviorally informed tools, such as default rules, norms, simplification, education, and warnings . There is continuing attention to the newest and best work in behavioral economics and its implications for public policy.
Faculty
The following Harvard faculty are participating members in the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy.
Featured Research
Algorithmic Harm in Consumer Markets
Oren Bar-Gill, Cass R. Sunstein & Inbal Talgam-Cohen
August 21, 2023
Decisions about Decisions: Practical Reason in Ordinary Life
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
June 2023
Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
September 6, 2022
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony & Cass R. Sunstein
May 31, 2022
Do Nudges Reduce Borrowing and Consumer Confusion in the Credit Card Market?
Paul Adams, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Lucy Hayes, Stefan Hunt, David Laibson & Neil Stewart
May 3, 2022
Rethinking Nudge: An Information-Costs Theory of Default Rules
Oren Bar-Gill & Omri Ben-Shahar
2021
Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt
John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian & William L. Skimmyhorn
July 19, 2021
Hayekian Behavioral Economics
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
March 19, 2021
The Power of Experiments: Decision Making in a Data-Driven World
Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman
Harvard Business School
March 2, 2021
Behavioral Welfare Economics
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
June 1, 2020