Behavioral economics is, ultimately, about how we think of people. The assumptions we make about people change how we approach problems related to their behavior. If we assume that their actions follow their intentions, we will design programs that attempt to change intentions. If we think that people take an action if they are informed […]
At each of our pilot sites, the BETA Project uses a four-stage problem-solving process: define, diagnose, design and test. In the coming months, we will highlight interesting findings from our work at each stage over this past year. We’ll start by discussing the define stage, where we attempt to correctly define a problem that can […]
America’s future economic competitiveness, individuals’ economic opportunity, and reducing income inequality all depend heavily on increasing the number of graduates of quality postsecondary education programs. Fortunately, there is now a general consensus for the need to improve this hard-to-move outcome. The focus has turned to figuring out what is cost-effective and designing postsecondary policies and […]
Imagine having to make a small sum of money last an entire month, ensuring that there is money available at the right time for rent, food, school fees, and other incidentals. Anyone who has tried to get by on a limited budget will know how hard this is; winding up with not quite enough as […]
In the United States, the information companies are required to disclose to consumers can take several forms. Some disclosures are statements displayed on a product (“Warning: Cigarettes Cause Strokes and Heart Disease”). Others are numbers, from product characteristics (calories) to government ratings (Crash Safety Ratings). And some are notifications about certain actions (like the charging of […]
Behavioral economics’ most successful large-scale impacts have so far been in the developed world, with notable successes including the headway made on getting Americans to save for retirement or the many successes of Britain’s Nudge Unit. But at ideas42, we believe that behavioral economics can also dramatically change the way development programs work (for the […]
Of late, ideas42 co-founders Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir and their co-authors (including ideas42 affiliate Anuj Shah) have been looking into a fascinating question: does poverty create additional psychological and cognitive burdens? Is there some way in which poverty makes people take worse decision? The short – and fascinating – answer is: yes. Dave Nussbaum’s blog Random […]
ideas42 co-founder Sendhil Mullainathan was recently at the World Bank, where he spoke about behavioral design and development. The World Bank’s “All About Finance” blog has a nice summary of the talk. Quite apart from anything else, the post provides a good introduction to what ideas42 is about and why it was founded: “(M)any studies […]
Another one from the archive: In this TED talk from 2010, Sendhil talks about something that animates a lot of the work ideas42 does: the problems we know how to solve, in a technical sense, but don’t. “We know how to reduce child deaths due to diarrhea, how to prevent diabetes-related blindness and how to […]
Several years since a collapse in house prices triggered the deepest financial and economic crisis in post-war American history, almost one in eight mortgage borrowers in the US are now either delinquent or in foreclosure proceedings. However, despite the considerable resources invested in various loan modification programs, the benefits have not reached the majority of […]
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