Behavioral Public Policy in a Global Context

Michael Sanders is a Professor of Public Policy and Director of Experimental Government at King's College London, where his research concerns the use of behavioural science and randomised trials to achieve social justice and reduce inequality. He was previously the Founding Chief Executive of What Works for Children's Social Care, and the first Chief Scientist of the Behavioural Insights Team. He has taught behavioural science for public policymaking at King's, and at Oxford and Harvard Universities.Syon Bhanot is Associate Professor of Economics at Swarthmore College. His research focuses on using experimental methods to test behavioral science insights in public policy contexts. He regularly publishes his work in peer-reviewed journals across the social sciences and is a frequent commentator for major media outlets.Shibeal O’ Flaherty is a Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy at King’s College London, and a Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on applying behavioral science to improve welfare across a range of policy areas, including workplace wellbeing, sustainability, and uptake of social benefits and welfare programs.

• Foreword by David Halpern.- Chapter 1: Introduction.- Section 1: Central Teams.- Chapter 2: From innovative to imperative: Evolving the application of behavioral science in the Government of Canada.- Chapter 3: Ten Years of Ireland’s Behavioural Research Unit.- Section 2: Line departments.- Chapter 4: Learning by Doing: Designing and Testing Behavioral Interventions to Improve Labor Programs.- Chapter 5: Launching the first federal effort to apply behavioral science to U.S. human services programs.- Chapter 6: Designing for social impact: Behavioral science field studies to improve economic mobility.- Chapter 7: The World's first Government Behavioural Insights Team dedicated to Public Health: Ten Lessons Learned over a Decade of Experience.- Chapter 8: Blending Backgrounds: Building Behavioral Insights at the U.S. IRS.- Section 3: The Global South.- Chapter 9: Reflections from Ideas 42’s economic justice team.- Chapter 10: MineduLab, the innovation laboratory for a cost-effective educational policy in Peru.- Chapter 11: Lessons Learned from Applying Behavioral Science in the Middle East.- Chapter 12: Improving Lives in Latin America and the Caribbean.- Chapter 13: Behavioural Insights in South Africa – a view from the Global South, learning, growing, and evolving.- Chapter 14: Expanding beyond nudge: Experiences applying behavioral science for comprehensive social change.- Section 4: Going Local.- Chapter 15: Doing Behavioural Science in the Eternal City: The Case of R².- Chapter 16: Nudging United States Local Government to What Works.- Chapter 17: Putting Behavioral Science to Work in The City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection: The Philadelphia Behavioral Science Initiative.- Section 5: Going Meta.- Chapter 18: The evolution of a rigorous multi-disciplinary behavioural team: lessons from financial regulation in the UK.- Chapter 19: eMBeDding Behavioral Sciences in International Development.- Chapter 20: Behavioural and Cultural Insights for better health:the BCI Unit at WHO Regional Office for Europe.- Chapter 21: Embedding Behavioural Science into the work of the United Nations.- Section 6: Outside Government.- Chapter 22: The Megastudy Approach for Changing Behavior at Scale.- Chapter 23: The Busara Center: Letters To Our Past.- Chapter 24: Inside Out: BCG’s Path to Applying and Embedding Behavioral Science