Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

by Richard H. Thaler

The team, officially called the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), began as a small unit of just six behavioral scientists: Maya, two fellows on loan from universities, and three more on leave from not-for-profit think tanks, the North American branch of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which specializes in running RCTs, and ideas42, which has behavioral economics as its core strength. In just the first year, the SBST embedded a dozen behaviorally-informed randomized control trials into federal programs, with policy objectives ranging from increasing uptake of veterans’ benefits to helping people pay off their student loans. And the team is growing too. The federal government recently responded to the team’s early successes by committing part of its budget to fund additional team members. Thanks to federal support and the continued support of outside partners, the team should have doubled in size by the time this book is published. Other countries are also joining the movement. A study conducted by the Economic and Social Research Council published in 2014 reports that 136 countries around the world have incorporated behavioral sciences in some aspects of public policy, and 51 “have developed centrally directed policy initiatives that have been influenced by the new behavioural sciences.” Clearly word is spreading.