• Foreword
• 1 An introduction to Behavioural Public Policy
  • 1.1 Schedule
  • 1.2 Who am I?
  • 1.3 What is Behavioural Public Policy?
  • 1.4 What is public policy?
    • 1.4.1 Definition
    • 1.4.2 Design
    • 1.4.3 Delivery
    • 1.4.4 A self-examination moment
  • 1.5 About this class
    • 1.5.1 General organization
    • 1.5.2 Behavioural intervention project
    • 1.5.3 Case studies and participation
    • 1.5.4 Evaluation
  • 1.6 Overview: where are we going?
    • 1.6.1 Behavioural biases, heuristics, and models of cognition
    • 1.6.2 Frameworks
    • 1.6.3 Cooperation and reciprocity
    • 1.6.4 Test of time: Present bias and procrastination
    • 1.6.5 Out of the WEIRD space and scarcity mindset
    • 1.6.6 Fairness and acceptability
    • 1.6.7 Climate
    • 1.6.8 Institutional space
    • 1.6.9 New Frontiers
• 2 Heuristics and models
  • 2.1 Foreword
  • 2.2 In a nutshell
  • 2.3 Origins and limits of the rational choice theory
    • 2.3.1 Before rationaly was the universal assumption
    • 2.3.2 From prescribing to assuming rationality
    • 2.3.3 Challenges to rationality
  • 2.4 Behavioural biases
    • 2.4.1 Status quo
    • 2.4.2 Loss aversion
    • 2.4.3 Representativeness
    • 2.4.4 Availability
    • 2.4.5 Anchoring
    • 2.4.6 Overconfidence
    • 2.4.7 Framing
    • 2.4.8 Confirmation bias
  • 2.5 Policy use of behavioural biases: the Nudge movement and its criticisms
    • 2.5.1 A nudge fad?
    • 2.5.2 Criticisms
  • 2.6 On the usefulness of a model of behaviour
    • 2.6.1 The Cobra effect
    • 2.6.2 A list of biases is not a model of human behaviour
  • 2.7 Various models for various needs
    • 2.7.1 Prospect theory
    • 2.7.2 Dual-system theories
    • 2.7.3 Self-determination theory
  • 2.8 The evolutionary perspective
  • 2.9 Making things simpler
    • 2.9.1 Basic social help
    • 2.9.2 Designing passwords
    • 2.9.3 Communicating efficiently
    • 2.9.4 Sludge
• 3 Frameworks
  • 3.1 In a nutshell
  • 3.2 On the types of behavioural interventions: making sense of the BPP space
  • 3.3 Which framework do you use?
    • 3.3.1 The outsider’s point of view
    • 3.3.2 Corporate and civil service framework culture: expectations
  • 3.4 Framework families
  • 3.5 Concept organisation frameworks
    • 3.5.1 The Cognitive bias codex
    • 3.5.2 Theories of human cognition
    • 3.5.3 The MINDSPACE
    • 3.5.4 Going EAST
    • 3.5.5 Some EAST application examples
  • 3.6 Intervention frameworks
    • 3.6.1 Is it a behavioural problem?
    • 3.6.2 Explaining your work in a flowchart
  • 3.7 Integrated frameworks
  • 3.8 Ethical frameworks
    • 3.8.1 The OECD-OPSI framework
    • 3.8.2 An evolving landscape
  • 3.9 Bottom line
• 4 Reciprocity and cooperation
  • 4.1 In a nutshell
  • 4.2 Cooperation, Reciprocity, Social Cognition, Reputation
  • 4.3 Cooperation the lab
    • 4.3.1 A basic grammar of games
    • 4.3.2 Let’s play again
    • 4.3.3 Trust and spotting defectors
  • 4.4 Sustaining cooperation in the field: reputation
    • 4.4.1 What is reputation?
    • 4.4.2 Unconscious reputation management
    • 4.4.3 Conscious reputation management
  • 4.5 From reputation to social norm
  • 4.6 From the lab to the field: prosocial behaviours
    • 4.6.1 How trustworthy are people in my country?
  • 4.7 Leveraging social cognition
    • 4.7.1 Use and dangers of Social norms
    • 4.7.2 Using reputation to foster political participation
    • 4.7.3 Building up new norms from scratch
    • 4.7.4 Behavioural cascades
  • 4.8 Bottom line: like for any powerful tool, use with caution
  • 4.9 Is cooperation as an innate trait?
    • 4.9.1 Young children respond to calls for help cues
    • 4.9.2 Reputation awareness emerges early
    • 4.9.3 The pleasure of giving
• 5 Procrastination and time preference
  • 5.1 In a nutshell
  • 5.2 Procrastination?
  • 5.3 From present preference to procrastination, through present bias
    • 5.3.1 Measuring your present bias
    • 5.3.2 The Marshmallow test
    • 5.3.3 Do kids get worse at self-control?
  • 5.4 The policy issues with procrastination
    • 5.4.1 Procrastination across life domains
    • 5.4.2 Social consequences of procrastination
    • 5.4.3 Student procrastination
  • 5.5 Behavioural levers: can we fight procrastination today?
    • 5.5.1 Symbolic rewards, real effects
    • 5.5.2 Decrease the short-term cost
    • 5.5.3 Make long-term consequences salient
    • 5.5.4 Commitment devices
    • 5.5.5 Combined interventions
  • 5.6 Timeliness
  • 5.7 Bottom line
  • 5.8 Annex: Hyperbolic discounting
• 6 Scarcity mindset
  • 6.1 In a nutshell
  • 6.2 Whose behaviour?
  • 6.3 Poverty and affluence
    • 6.3.1 Between-country inequalities
    • 6.3.2 Within-countries inequalities
    • 6.3.3 Will I have poor people in my target population? Yes, likely.
    • 6.3.4 Spotting poor people is tricky
    • 6.3.5 The high cost of poverty
  • 6.4 Our environment shapes our behaviour
    • 6.4.1 Ecological adaptation among animals
    • 6.4.2 Ecological adaptation among humans
    • 6.4.3 Childhood deprivation and reproductive strategies
  • 6.5 Environment and cognition
    • 6.5.1 Present preference
  • 6.6 Bottom line: design your intervention with heterogenity in mind
  • 6.7 How to deal with poverty? With cash, no conditions attached
  • 6.8 A final terminology point
• 7 Fairness and acceptability
  • 7.1 In a nutshell
  • 7.2 Efficient yet unpopular policies
    • 7.2.1 The estate tax
    • 7.2.2 The carbon tax
  • 7.3 What does “Fairness” means?
  • 7.4 The trolley problem
    • 7.4.1 Canonical form
    • 7.4.2 From the canonical form to variations
    • 7.4.3 Empirical results
  • 7.5 The Moral Machine Experiment
  • 7.6 Fairness and policies
    • 7.6.1 Vaccine hesitancy
  • 7.7 Changing perceptions
    • 7.7.1 Urban cars
    • 7.7.2 Social systems
  • 7.8 Bottom line
• 8 Climate Behavioural Policy
  • 8.1 In a nutshell
  • 8.2 A starting point
  • 8.3 A behavioural analysis of climate change policies
    • 8.3.1 Procrastination
    • 8.3.2 Information overload
    • 8.3.3 Mind the gap
    • 8.3.4 A collective action problem
    • 8.3.5 Motivated reasoning and partisanship
  • 8.4 Structural obstacles to behavioural climate policies
    • 8.4.1 Social sciences arrived late in the field
    • 8.4.2 Behavioural results are not modelling-ready relations
    • 8.4.3 Doubts on the reliability of behavioural science
  • 8.5 Behavioural levers for better climate policies
    • 8.5.1 Consumer behaviour
    • 8.5.2 Removing social and partisan barriers to policy
    • 8.5.3 Decision process design
  • 8.6 Bottom line: Embedding behavioural climate policy
• 9 An Expanding Field: Noise, Sludge, Regulation
  • 9.1 In a nutshell
  • 9.2 Sludge
    • 9.2.1 Nudge, not Sludge
    • 9.2.2 Sludge audits
  • 9.3 Noise
    • 9.3.1 The Hungry Judges case
    • 9.3.2 Breaking down noise to components
    • 9.3.3 Noise reduction strategies
  • 9.4 AI from a behavioural science perspective
    • 9.4.1 A bias and noise reduction device?
    • 9.4.2 Human-AI interactions
  • 9.5 Deceptive Design
    • 9.5.1 Phishing for Phools
    • 9.5.2 From Dark patterns to Deceptive Design
  • 9.6 Bottom line
• 10 A Framework for Case Studies
  • 10.1 Describing an intervention
  • 10.2 Analyzing the intervention
    • 10.2.1 Policy issue
    • 10.2.2 Whodunit?
    • 10.2.3 Diagnosis
    • 10.2.4 Intervention
    • 10.2.5 Impact assessment
• 11 Useful Resources
  • 11.1 What is this?
  • 11.2 Writing and editing documents
    • 11.2.1 Reference management
    • 11.2.2 Writing implements
    • 11.2.3 Typography
  • 11.3 Data Visualisation
  • 11.4 Behavioural science resources
  • 11.5 Project management
  • 11.6 Comparable courses
    • 11.6.1 Syllabus
    • 11.6.2 Delivery and evaluation

A class of (Applied) Behavioural Public Policy

Mathieu Perona

2026-05-06