Economist Channel

1. Call for Papers Behavioural Science in Law & Policy: Evidence, Ethics, & Expertise; This is a workshop we will be jointly conducting with Newcastle Law School.

2. "Food insecurity and social protection in Europe". Paper by team of authors, including Aaron Reeves who spoke here recently, examining the rise in report food insecurity over the economic crisis in countries with different types of social protection systems.

3. Brown, Kapteyn, Mitchell "Framing & Claiming: How Information‐Framing Affects Expected Social Security Claiming"

4. OECD paper by Heckman & colleagues relatively accessible & detailed overview of economics of non-cognitive skills

My advice for economists is always the same, and that is: read outside economics. Being a good economist means being a good social scientist and therefore knowing what psychologists do, what sociologists do, what political scientists are doing. Understanding the ideas in the literatures and understanding the templates, the modes of thought that define those analyses matters because so much of successful economics represents integration of ideas outside of economics proper and because a good economist needs to understand what is left out of our approaches. The second piece of advice is to avoid being doctrinaire on empirical methodology. There’s a lot of controversy about the role of economic theory, structural models in empirical work as opposed to natural experiments. I think this fighting is unhealthy. As economists, we’re trying to get answers and to understand specific questions such as the counterfactual effects of a new policy and whatever tools are available that are going to help elucidate the answer, should be employed. Doctrinaire claims on the value of structural versus nonstructural empirics are theology, not science.

6.  Applying Behavioral Insights to Health Policy: Progress So Far and Challenges to Be Met from Michael Hallsworth at the BIT

7. Dr. Jay Watts "Employment Must Not Be the Aim of Mental Health Treatment". This is a key debate in the relationship between psychology and public policy.

8. Nature piece on the new International Panel on Social Progress. Below is the mission statement.

"The International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) will harness the competence of hundreds of experts about social issues and will deliver a report addressed to all social actors, movements, organizations, politicians and decision-makers, in order to provide them with the best expertise on questions that bear on social change.  The Panel will seek consensus whenever possible but will not hide controversies and will honestly present up-to-date arguments and analyses, and debates about them, in an accessible way. The Panel will have no partisan political agenda, but will aim at restoring hope in social progress and stimulating intellectual and public debates. Different political and philosophical views may conceive of social progress in different ways, emphasizing values such as freedom, dignity, or equality. The Panel will retain full independence from political parties, governments, and organizations with a partisan agenda. While the Panel will primarily work for the dissemination of knowledge to all relevant actors in society, it will also foster research on the topics it will study and help to revive interest for research in social long-term prospective analysis."

9. Working paper on new experiments in the Understanding Society Innovation panel (via @Matteo_Galizzi on twitter - in general Matteo is well worth following for behavioural science links).

10. Barrio, Pablo J., Daniel G. Goldstein, & Jake M. Hofman. (2016). Improving comprehension of numbers in the news. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16). See also this blogpost by Dan Goldstein on how to communicate calorie requirements.

11. The Theory and Practice of “Nudging”: Changing Health Behaviors including Ivo Vlaev who spoke here recently.