Behavioral Economics

Cass Sunstein ’78, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, has been tapped by the World Health Organization to chair its Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.

Talia Gillis’ work cuts a wide swath, one focus being the intersection of artificial intelligence and consumer loan discrimination. It’s driven by a question: “What does it mean for a credit pricing algorithm to discriminate?”

Talia Gillis’ work cuts a wide swath, one focus being the intersection of artificial intelligence and consumer loan discrimination. It’s driven by a question: “What does it mean for a credit pricing algorithm to discriminate?”

In an interview with Harvard Law Today, Cass Sunstein discussed his research, and a recently published paper on how people decide what they do or do not want to know.

Professor Allen Ferrell ’95 paper, "Socially Responsible Firms," has been ranked number two on the Journal of Financial Economics' list of the most cited articles since 2016.

As part of a series called Focal Point, in which the Harvard Gazette asks a range of Harvard faculty members to answer the same question, I. Glenn Cohen explains why we should scrutinize what is and then ponder what should be.

A single person cannot change a social norm; it requires a movement from people who disapprove of the norm, writes Sunstein. He explores how those movements, ranging from the fight for LGBTQ rights to white nationalism, take shape and effect change.

In a recent book talk sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library, Cass Sunstein discussed the different ways that social change happens, from unleashing to nudging to social cascades.

HLS Professor Cass Sunstein ’78 argues that for all their differences, every president since Ronald Reagan has agreed on one fundamental principle of government. That is, “No action may be taken unless the benefits justify the costs.” Sunstein identifies President Reagan as the main architect of this concept, and he credits the president he served under, Barack Obama ’91, with cementing what he calls “the cost-benefit revolution,” which is also the title of Sunstein’s new book.

Statistics released by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) indicate that, as of the end of 2018, Harvard Law School faculty members have continued to feature prominently on SSRN’s list of the 100 most-cited law professors.

While the data firm Cambridge Analytica and questions of data privacy propelled Facebook into the headlines in recent months, Facebook has been under the critical…

The Harvard Law School Library hosted a series of book talks by HLS authors, with topics including Authoritarianism in America, the Supreme Court of India, and Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict. As part of this ongoing series, faculty authors from various disciplines shared their research and discussed their recently published books with a panel of colleagues and the Harvard Law community.

The Harvard Association for Law and Business (HALB) hosted Bill Ackman, founder and chief executive officer of Pershing Square Capital Management, to discuss his views on the current state of activist investing, his experience managing a multibillion dollar fund, and the impact of shareholder activism on corporate governance.

Cass Sunstein ’78, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University and renowned legal scholar and behavioral economist, received the prestigious Holberg Prize at the University of Bergen, Norway, on June 6.

Harvard has announced the creation of a new, interdisciplinary project called the Behavioral Insights Health Project—a partnership between faculty members at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, and other schools at Harvard that will explore how behavioral science and behavioral economics can help improve health outcomes for patients, and decisions made by doctors.

The Holberg Prize—one of the largest international prizes awarded annually to an outstanding researcher in the arts and humanities, the social sciences, law or theology—named U.S. legal scholar Cass Robert Sunstein as its 2018 Laureate. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University.

Cass Sunstein urges people to consume more diverse information for the good of our democracy

The concept of speech is typically defined as the communication of thoughts in spoken words. Yet the authors note that First Amendment protection of speech is far broader, covering nonrepresentational art, instrumental music, and even nonsense—individual topics that Tushnet, Chen, and Blocher focus on (in that order) in the book.