Fascinating Behavioral Economics

By Aline Holzwarth When Isaac Newton put forth the three laws of motion more than three hundred years ago, he did something radical. It wasn’t his theories or the computations behind them that were so revolutionary — in fact, Newton’s first law is a mere reiteration of Galileo’s theory of inertia, formulated 50 or so years earlier.

People tend to vote along social identity lines and Indian politicians intuitively know how to make this work in their favour

If procrastination isn’t about laziness, then what is it about?

This piece was written by Dr. Kizzy Gandy, Principal Advisor within the Behavioural Insights Team’s (BIT’s) international development team. For more like this, see our government innovation newsfeed. As the original nudge unit, we’re often asked whether behavioural insights are relevant across different cultures and economies. Can we draw similar conclusions about people’s behaviour in Britain, where we were first set up, as in, say, Bangladesh?...

Should you get a Ph.D? We asked four behavioral scientists for their advice.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s ‘nudge’ could very well be of use to the Narendra Modi govt as it’s keen on changing citizen behaviour in areas as diverse as cleanliness and digital money

Behavioral economists found that US students didn't perform well on international standardized tests due to a lack of effort.

We could all learn something about willpower from 4-year-old Cameroonians.