FehrAdvice (Switzerland):” Der im “Behavioral Economics Guide 2014″ erschienene Beitrag von FehrAdvice zur Behavioral Change Matrix steht Ihnen nun auch als Einzeldokument zum Download zur Verfügung”. Download (PDF, 487KB) (English) ... (More >)
Values at Play in Digital Games
New book by Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum: “All games express and embody human values, providing a compelling arena in which we play out beliefs and ideas. “Big ideas” such as justice, equity, honesty, and cooperation—as well as other kinds of ideas, including violence, exploitation, and greed—may emerge in games whether designers intend them or not. In this book, Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum present Values at Play, a theoretical and practical framework for identifying socially recognized moral and political values in digital games. Values at Play can also serve as a guide to designers who seek to implement... (More >)
Just how well has the 'nudge unit' done?
Broadcast at BBC News: “Nudging – concept of changing people’s behaviour without recourse to the law but to psychology – has been one of the big policy ideas of the last few years The coalition government set up a “nudge unit”, officially called the Behavioural Insights Team, in 2010. But just how successful has it been? David Halpern, who heads the unit, told the Today programme’s Evan Davis that it has enjoyed a wide range of successes. He said that by adding the line “‘most people pay their tax on time’ to a letter you get a significant increase... (More >)
In Tests, Scientists Try to Change Behaviors
Wall Street Journal: “Behavioral scientists look for environmental ‘nudges’ to influence how people act. Pelle Guldborg Hansen, a behavioral scientist, is trying to figure out how to board passengers on a plane with less fuss. The goal is to make plane-boarding more efficient by coaxing passengers to want to be more orderly, not by telling them they must. It is one of many projects in which Dr. Hansen seeks to encourage people, when faced with options, to make better choices. Among these: prompting people to properly dispose of cigarette butts outside of bars and clubs and inducing hospital workers... (More >)
The Innovators
Kirkus Review of “The innovators. How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution” by Walter Isaacson: “Innovation occurs when ripe seeds fall on fertile ground,” Aspen Institute CEO Isaacson (Steve Jobs, 2011, etc.) writes in this sweeping, thrilling tale of three radical innovations that gave rise to the digital age. First was the evolution of the computer, which Isaacson traces from its 19th-century beginnings in Ada Lovelace’s “poetical” mathematics and Charles Babbage’s dream of an “Analytical Engine” to the creation of silicon chips with circuits printed on them. The second was “the invention of... (More >)
Neuroeconomics, Judgment, and Decision Making
New edited book by Evan A. Wilhelms, and Valerie F. Reyna: “This volume explores how and why people make judgments and decisions that have economic consequences, and what the implications are for human well-being. It provides an integrated review of the latest research from many different disciplines, including social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; neuroscience and neurobiology; and economics and business. The book has six areas of focus: historical foundations; cognitive consistency and inconsistency; heuristics and biases; neuroeconomics and neurobiology; developmental and individual differences; and improving decisions. Throughout, the contributors draw out implications from traditional behavioral research as well as... (More >)
Do We Choose Our Friends Because They Share Our Genes?
Rob Stein at NPR: “People often talk about how their friends feel like family. Well, there’s some new research out that suggests there’s more to that than just a feeling. People appear to be more like their friends genetically than they are to strangers, the research found. “The striking thing here is that friends are actually significantly more similar to one another than we were expecting,” says James Fowler, a professor of medical genetics at the University of California, San Diego, who conducted the study with Nicholas A. Christakis, a social scientist at Yale University. In fact, the study... (More >)
How Britain’s Getting Public Policy Down to a Science
Jonathan Walters in Governing: “Britain has a bold yet simple plan to do something few U.S. governments do: test the effectiveness of multiple policies before rolling them out. But are American lawmakers willing to listen to facts more than money or politics? In medicine they do clinical trials to determine whether a new drug works. In business they use focus groups to help with product development. In Hollywood they field test various endings for movies in order to pick the one audiences like best. In the world of public policy? Well, to hear members of the United Kingdom’s Behavioural... (More >)
Innovation Contests
Paper by David Pérez Castrillo and David Wettstein: “We study innovation contests with asymmetric information and identical contestants, where contestants’ efforts and innate abilities generate inventions of varying qualities. The designer offers a reward to the contestant achieving the highest quality and receives the revenue generated by the innovation. We characterize the equilibrium behavior, outcomes and payoffs for both nondiscriminatory and discriminatory (where the reward is contestant-dependent) contests. We derive conditions under which the designer obtains a larger payoff when using a discriminatory contest and describe settings where these conditions are satisfied.” ... (More >)
The promise and perils of giving the public a policy ‘nudge’
Nicholas Biddle and Katherine Curchin at the Conversation: “…These behavioural insights are more than just intellectual curiosities. They are increasingly being used by policymakers inspired by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s bestselling manifesto for libertarian paternalism, Nudge. The British and New South Wales governments have set up behavioural insights units. Many other governments around Australia are following their lead. Most of the attention so far has been on how behavioural insights could be employed to make people slimmer, greener, more altruistic or better savers. However, it’s time we started thinking and talking about the impact these ideas could have... (More >)
