Course: Introduction to Behavioural Economics: Employee and Customer Behaviour

Defaults give us an opportunity to reflect on the ethics of nudging, a hugely important topic in behavioural science. The classic libertarian paternalist argument is that defaults do not strictly …

Paul looks at the ethics of nudging.

Many decisions we take every day have a default option, whether we recognise it or not. Defaults are the options that are pre-selected if an individual does not make an …

Anti-incentives combine commitments and incentives to signal that you care enough about something to turn down money not to do it. Anti-incentives may sound strange but are easily illustrated using …

Whereas incentives seek to guide prospective choices, commitments remove choices from the table altogether. Paul gives some examples of commitments.

We are all aware of the limits to our willpower. We will say we want a healthy lifestyle but fall victim to temptation when we get the opportunity to smoke, …