Whether by design or by happenstance, nudges are all around us. Our behavior is designed through these informational or environmental changes that influence our behavior without changing financial incentives. Think …
Presents, the present and pensions.
I am going to begin this article by making three predictions about your behaviour. The first is that you left wrapping your Christmas gifts later than you planned to. The …
Thinking outside the penalty box.
This blog post is a bit different. A lot of the articles we write try to show you how we change people’s behaviour; the principles we rely on, our successful …
No one likes losing.
Every winter, the UK finds itself wrestling with a flu outbreak. The government runs a vaccination programme targeting the young and elderly, but people still get sick and die. Imagine …
A soft-touch approach to tax compliance.
A soft-touch approach to tax compliance. Tax collectors are used to less-than-enthusiastic compliance, but that doesn’t make non-payment any less infuriating. People who file their taxes, accept their bill, and …
One in, X out: a push and a nudge towards better regulation.
Grover Norquist is not a fan of big government. Arguably the best statement of the pugnacious American’s philosophy is that he doesn’t “want to abolish government. I simply want to …
An end to reckon-based policymaking?
Of all the words to cause an economist’s heart to sink, there is nothing quite like a politician opening a sentence with ‘I reckon’. A ‘reckon’, or hunch, may do …
Uber generates 18-million-dollars of consumer ‘wellbeing’ every day.
The price of a good in a market reflects both consumer value and the cost of producing the good. On the consumer side, for a consumer to buy a good, …
Taking regulation to the masses? The trend towards customer engagement.
1 June, 2016 Taking regulation to the masses? The trend towards customer engagement. When most people hear the word “regulation,” they likely think about government bureaucrats and bloated agencies. For …
Test scores drop when the football’s on.
On June 10th, the 2016 European Championship starts in France. England, Northern Ireland, and Wales will be represented at the tournament. Not since 1986 have we had three home nations …