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OVERVIEW: A growing body of evidence suggests that insights
from the behavioural sciences - from psychology and behavioural economics to
neurosciences - can help design public policies that work better, cost less,
and help people to achieve their goals. By showing that individuals deviate in
predictable ways from neoclassical assumptions of rationality, behavioural
sciences may help policy makers and administrative agencies to design policies
that accommodate how people really behave, not how they are assumed to behave.
Under both UK Prime Minister Cameron and US President Obama, policy makers have recently been encouraged to draw on behavioural and social sciences insights in the design or implementation of new regulations. In the UK, through a process of rapid, iterative experimentation ("Test, Learn, Adapt"), the Behavioural Insights Team has successfully identified and tested interventions that will further advance priorities of the British government, while saving the government at least £1 billion within the next five years. The US federal government has also been experimenting with the idea and is currently creating a new team that will help build federal capacity to experiment with these approaches and scale behavioural interventions that have been rigorously evaluated, using, where possible, randomized controlled trials.
Although the results of the first nudging experiments are mixed, there seems to be an emerging consensus around the idea that regulation cannot work effectively or efficiently if regulators do not consider how targeted people respond.
However, besides a few isolated initiatives displaying some behavioural consideration (e.g. revision of the tobacco products directive, consumer information regulation, behavioural advertising, behavioural remedies in competition law), the European Union has not yet shown a commitment to integrate behavioural research into its policy-making. Given the potential of this regulatory approach in attaining effective, low-cost and choice-preserving policies, such a stance seems inadequate when measured against the EU's commitment to smart regulation in the Europe 2020 Strategy.
Against this backdrop, our workshop aims to: (i) map the actual and possible uses of behavioural insights in EU policy making; (ii) explore what roles - if any - behavioural sciences may play in EU law; and (iii) discuss how they could be better integrated into EU law-making.
Under both UK Prime Minister Cameron and US President Obama, policy makers have recently been encouraged to draw on behavioural and social sciences insights in the design or implementation of new regulations. In the UK, through a process of rapid, iterative experimentation ("Test, Learn, Adapt"), the Behavioural Insights Team has successfully identified and tested interventions that will further advance priorities of the British government, while saving the government at least £1 billion within the next five years. The US federal government has also been experimenting with the idea and is currently creating a new team that will help build federal capacity to experiment with these approaches and scale behavioural interventions that have been rigorously evaluated, using, where possible, randomized controlled trials.
Although the results of the first nudging experiments are mixed, there seems to be an emerging consensus around the idea that regulation cannot work effectively or efficiently if regulators do not consider how targeted people respond.
However, besides a few isolated initiatives displaying some behavioural consideration (e.g. revision of the tobacco products directive, consumer information regulation, behavioural advertising, behavioural remedies in competition law), the European Union has not yet shown a commitment to integrate behavioural research into its policy-making. Given the potential of this regulatory approach in attaining effective, low-cost and choice-preserving policies, such a stance seems inadequate when measured against the EU's commitment to smart regulation in the Europe 2020 Strategy.
Against this backdrop, our workshop aims to: (i) map the actual and possible uses of behavioural insights in EU policy making; (ii) explore what roles - if any - behavioural sciences may play in EU law; and (iii) discuss how they could be better integrated into EU law-making.