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
Is Deontology a Heuristic? On Psychology, Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
August 1, 2013
Behavioral Economics, Consumption, and Environmental Protection
Cass Sunstein
Harvard Law School
July 21, 2013
The Value of a Statistical Life: Some Clarifications and Puzzles
Cass Sunstein
Harvard Law School
June 13, 2013
Automatically Green: Behavioral Economics and Environmental Protection
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
Lucia Reisch
Copenhagen Business School
April 5, 2013
Choice Architecture
Richard H. Thaler
University of Chicago – Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
John P. Balz
University of Chicago – Political Science Department
April 2, 2010
Impersonal Default Rules vs. Active Choices vs. Personalized Default Rules: A Triptych
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
November 5, 2012
The Storrs Lectures: Behavioral Economics and Paternalism
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
November 29, 2012
Empirically Informed Regulation
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
2011
Local and Global Knowledge in the Administrative State
Adrian Vermeule
Harvard Law School
2012
Rationally Arbitrary Decisions (in Administrative Law)
Adrian Vermeule
Harvard Law School
2013