The Collection aims to understand in which way behavioral and experimental approaches can be useful for designing, evaluating and implementing policies. Designing and evaluating policies require both a deep knowledge on how individuals make decisions, assessing if and how they react to economic incentives, regulation, or nudges, and being able to establish a causal relationship between the adopted policy and the target individuals’ behavioral reaction.
The expected contributions should encompass analyses of the role played by social norms and other social factors (e.g. networks and trust) in the implementation of policies, including public policies and those promoted by non-profit organizations. The analyses can include differences in social factors by regions, local communities, generations, gender, etc. within a country, and/or in a comparative perspective. All kind of policies can be addressed, including for example ecological and energy transition policies, social policies, financial policies. The policy can be already implemented or new proposals designed by the authors. The implementation of a specific policy can be investigated through lab-in the field, natural experiments or randomized controls trials. Studies showing the effect of specific choice architecture on individual behaviors, or groups, are welcome. Overall, we encourage contributions addressing the decision process behind the behavior targeted by the policy, testing whether the proposed policy is effective in reaching the desired objective, and/or testing whether the policy produces undesired side effects. All contributions pinpointing the differences between the standard economics paradigm and the behavioral approach to policy design are welcome.
Open call on: 1 October 2024
Submit your contribution here.