The document discusses the role of behavioral science in public policy. It argues that economics must consider human emotions and "animal spirits" to fully understand economic decisions. Behavioral insights can improve policies in areas like benefit sanctions and pension auto-enrollment by recognizing cognitive biases. The document advocates for interdisciplinary university policy institutes to foster collaboration between researchers, educators, and policymakers in developing real-world applications of behavioral science.

2. Overview
1. Economics and Public Policy
2. Inter-disciplinarity
3. Behavioural Science
4. Examples and Applications
5. Irish Public Policy

3. "In reflecting on any action, which I am to perform a twelve-month hence, I
always resolve to prefer the greater good, whether at that time it will be
more contiguous or remote; nor does any difference in that particular make a
difference in my present intentions and resolutions. My distance from the
final determination makes all those minute differences vanish, nor am I
affected by any thing, but the general and more discernible qualities of good
and evil. But on my nearer approach, those circumstances, which I at first
over-looked, begin to appear, and have an influence on my conduct and
affections. A new inclination to the present good springs up, and makes it
difficult for me to adhere inflexibly to my first purpose and resolution. This
natural infirmity I may very much regret, and I may endeavour, by all possible
means, to free my self from it. I may have recourse to study and reflection
within myself; to the advice of friends; to frequent meditation, and repeated
resolution: And having experienced how ineffectual all these are, I may
embrace with pleasure any other expedient, by which I may impose a
restraint upon myself, and guard against this weakness."

4. Economics and Public Policy
• Scottish Enlightenment
• Pareto Turn in Economics
• Samuelson and Friedman
• Econometrics Society
• Economists as gatekeeper of knowledge in public policy

5. Interdisciplinarity and Public Policy
• Complexity of many issues
• Measurement Paradigms
• Team-based Science
• Motivation: Efficiency, Stability, Necessity, Reciprocity.
(Ankrah & AL-Tabbaa, 2015)

6. Challenges of Interdisciplinarity
• Assessing quality across fields
• Beer-mat inter-disciplinarity
• “Beer-mat knowledge” Vs. Interactional/Contributory Expertise
• Incentive problems
• Meaningful contributions Vs. Re-labelling
• Career structures
• Collaboration framework
• Boardman and Corley (2008) : estimates of researcher time-use

7. Behavioural Science and Public Policy
• 20th century challenges
• Herbert Simon
• Kahneman/Thaler/Sunstein
• Libertarian Paternalism
• Behavioural Science and Law

8. Economics can’t afford to overlook the role of emotions
in decision making: pain, pleasure, arousal, hunger,
thirst, anger, hatred, contempt, pity, etc...
“Animal Spirits”

9. To understand how economies work and how we can manage them
and prosper, we must pay attention to the thought patterns that
animate people’s feelings and ideas, their animal spirits”. We will
never really understand important economic events unless we
confront the fact that their causes are largely mental in nature
Akerlof and Shiller

10. 10
Behaviourally Informed Regulation

11. Measurement and
Evaluation
• Naturalistic Monitoring
• Comparison of Lab and
Field Experiments
• Measurement of
Consumption and Well-
Being
• Eliciting Economic
Preferences
Life-Cycle Economic
Behaviour and Outcomes
• Self-Control and Life-
long economic welfare
• Dynamic Interactions
between mental health
and economic
outcomes
• Non-cognitive traits
and economic
preferences
Ethical and Legal Aspects
of Behavioural Science
and Policy
• Ethics of Nudging
• Dark Nudging
• Implications of BE for
Regulation
• Implications of BE for
development of law
UCDBSP Key Research Themes

12. Research
• Based in Geary Institute
• Three Overlapping
Streams
• Development of cohort
of PhD and Postdoc
Researchers
• Wide range of seminar
activities
• European Networks
Education
• UG Module
• MSc in Behavioural
Economics
• Exec Education
• European Collabs
• PhD & ECF training
Industry and Policy
• AIB Financial Decision
Making Lab
• Amarach Collaboration
• Carr Collaboration
• IGEES & Public Policy
UCDBSP Main Branches of Activity

13. Example 1: Benefit Sanctions
• Economic Theory and Incentives for Job Search
• Psychology of Unemployment
• Importance of administrative law considerations
• Wider behavioural science of job market activation

14. Benefit Sanctions: Overview
• Global Financial Crisis
• Implementation of Austerity Policies
• High Focus on Working Age Benefit Policies
• Job Seekers Allowance
• Employment and Living Support Allowance
• Issues of Effectiveness
• Issues of Administrative Justice
• Mental Health Effects

15. Benefit Sanctions: Literature to Date
• Qualitative accounts of process problems with
implementation of sanctions
• Economic literature on partial success of moderate
sanctions in high growth economies e.g. Blundell et al
late 1990s
• Webster quantification of scale of sanctions
• Loopstra, Reeves, and others association with foodbank
use

19. Benefit Sanctions: Research Agenda
• What is the source of the sharp spatial and temporal
distinctions in benefit sanctions?
• Are benefit sanctions at local level related to psychological
distress among those claiming working age benefits?
• Did they lead causally to different employment outcomes?
• How to design job activation systems that empower
employment search without causing serious harm

20. Example 2: Pension Auto-enrolment
• Life-Cycle Consumption Model faces many challenges
• Under-saving and under-annuitisation
• Low elasticities to taxation incentives
• High impact of changes in default structure
• Wider behavioural science of economic behaviour

21. Auto-enrolment: Active Market Structuring

22. Benartzi & Thaler (2004), Save More Tomorrow, Journal of Political Economy
Auto-enrolment: Encouraging Pension Saving

23. 0.00
5.00
10.00
15.00
20.00
25.00
No Default Default 0.8 Default 4 Default 8
Optimal and experimental saving rates
Optimal saving rate Experimental saving rate
23
Auto-enrolment: Defaults as Recommendations

24. Models for Irish Public Policy
• SFI Center for Behavioural Science
• US: NSF approach to interdisciplinarity and Behavioural Sciences
• Govt and Regulatory Insights Teams
• U.K. Behavioural Insights Team
• National PhD (Sphere)
• Dublin Industry and Regulatory cluster
• “regional ecosystems of related industries and competences featuring
a broad array of inter-industry interdependencies” (EU Cluster
Policy)
• University Policy Research Institutes
• The role of the Whitaker and Geary Institutes

25. University Policy Research Institutes
• Foster collaboration:
• Forums for rapid feedback
• Holding pens for inter/transdisciplinary work
• Interdisciplinary education and professional
development:
• Internships/Masterclasses/Summer Schools
• Further develop transdisciplinary approach:
• Residencies from policy

26. Back to Hume
• Grounded economic science
• Empirical not dogmatic
• Blurring edges between disciplines
• Behavioural Science and Public Policy
• “We often act knowingly against their interest”

27. “The challenge to us all is to perfect both our
methods of appraising what needs to be done and
our democratic procedures for achieving our
national aims.”
Dr. T.K. Whitaker