Behavioral Public Policy and Economics GmbH
The Saudi Ministry of Health has announced its “Walk 30” campaign. The countrywide campaign under the theme “Saudi Walks!” seeks to promote public health by cultivating a culture of walking. It involves dozens of activities as well as a special walking event held on the Saudi National Day.
Here is a high-level overview containing key behavioral insights on consumer protection. It shows how policy-makers can initiate behavioral change by help of incentives, boosts, and nudges.
Summary of our workshop on grand challenges, containing six key principles for an efficient burden-sharing mechanism to cope with forced migration. Presented at the Asbar World Forum 2019 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Impressions from a fantastic and super inspiring Asbar World Forum “Towards the Future” held under the patronage of HRH Prince Faisal bin Bandar, Governor of Riyadh Region. More than 100 speakers from 15 countries.
We are very pleased to announce that BEHAVIA is Scientific Partner of this year’s Asbar World Forum – “Towards the Future”. The forum will be held under the patronage of HRH Prince Faisal Bin Bandar Al Saud, Governor of Riyadh, and take place from 4 – 6 November 2019 at the Fairmont Hotel Riyadh.
Register now at http://www.awforum.org/index.php/en/
Our directors Dr. Manuel Schubert and Dr. Julia Stauf give a workshop on Global Cooperation at the Asbar World Forum on 05/11/2019.
Time to rethink our behavior
Climate change, waste disposal or forced migration – most of today’s global challenges have the same root-cause: they result from a trade-off between collective and individual goals. During the workshop, the audience will engage in choice experiments to see how individual incentives are in stark contrast to socially desired outcomes.
How can we use these insights and apply them to joint global actions? Can we develop mechanisms to effectively cope with the underprovision of global public goods? The workshop will address these and related questions from a Behavioral Economics standpoint.
Register now http://www.awforum.org/index.php/en/registration-for-the-discussions
Previously, we discussed how the concept of time inconsistency can explain why we sometimes act against our own interest, and we identified different types of time-inconsistent decision makers. Now let’s turn to the really important part: strategies to save us from ourselves.
Last week, we identified time-inconsistent decision making as the main reason for our chocolate issues. We will now look into it in a bit more detail.
Behavioral economists group people with respect to the extent of how much self-control problems they exhibit and their awareness of these problems.
“Oh no, I did it again. My chocolate supply vanished into thin air. Okay, okay, not into the air, but into my belly. I just don’t get it. When it comes to sweets, I just cannot control myself.
I’m not a fool, I do know that devouring an entire bar of chocolate a day isn’t good for me in the long run. Strangely enough though, this happens every time I buy some. Why on earth can I not stick to my plans and just eat two pieces a day?!
Seems like “future me’ is a different version of “present me’ and dislikes performing my initial plans. What’s wrong with me?’
Well, from a behavioral economist’s point of view, the diagnose is that you suffer from time-inconsistency and a projection bias. But you’re not alone. Time-inconsistency is very common among humans, and there are remedies to cure it.
Our affiliate Marcus Giamattei is appointed as Professor for Macroeconomics at the Bard College Berlin. Before joining the Bard College Berlin, Marcus was assistant professor at the University of Passau. He is affiliated with CeDEx at the University of Nottingham, UK, and has been a visiting researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Marcus developed ClassEx, a tool for interactive classroom and lab-in-the-field experiments with mobile devices and LIONESS Lab, a platform for online experiments. Those platforms enable instructors and researchers to use experiments outside of the conventional laboratory environment. ClassEx and LIONESS are used in over 50 countries around the world.