Behavioral Public Policy in a Global Context

Michael Sanders is the Chief Executive of What Works for Children’s Social Care, and a Reader in Public Policy at King's College London (UK). Michael served as Chief Scientist at the Behavioral Insights Team. His research focuses on pro-sociality and social capital, and in particular how a combination of social preference and social influence can be used to improve access to education and social mobility for young people. He is the author, with Susannah Hume, of Social Butterflies: Reclaiming the Positive Power of our Social Networks. Syon Bhanot an Associate Professor of Economics at Swarthmore College (USA), studying behavioral and public economics. He holds a B.A. from Princeton University and an M.P.P. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. 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 in the media, with regular appearances in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and on NPR.  Shibeal O'Flaherty is a Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy at King's College London (UK). Her research focuses on developing and testing behaviorally-informed interventions aimed at improving employee well-being. Prior to this, she worked as a Program Manager at the Harvard Behavioral Insights Group from 2016 to 2018.

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