For this final assignment, pretend you have been hired by a governance organization – your client can be the federal government, a foreign government, a state or city government, a corporate or NGO board of directors, even a student government. They want your behavioral insights to help them address some issue – it can be a problem they have, an attempt to make improvements somewhere, or an enhancement in the lives of people whom their policies or projects affect.
Please explain who it is you are working for/with and why they might have approached you. Please explain what the problem is, and who might be affected (it is sometimes easier to focus on a specific group rather than the entire population). As relevant, please identify, concretely, which specific judgments, decisions, or behaviors you are addressing, and what the main bottlenecks are, currently. Please explain, concretely, how your insights and ideas could make a difference.
Please refer to what you’ve learned in the course, and feel welcome to expand with additional relevant research findings and references, in your proposal for a behaviorally informed approach / agenda / solution.
Please refer to at least 5 concepts from our course that you think are relevant and may prove useful to your proposed approach. Explain carefully what concepts and ideas you are using, and why you think they are relevant and might help. Please use these judiciously, and explain – merely making mention of terms is not helpful.
Your proposal can include novel ideas and interventions, as well as revisions of actual, existing policies that, in your view, might be lacking from a behavioral perspective. You are encouraged to be creative and original. At the same time, you should be sensitive to whether your proposals, as far as you can tell, are viable from a legal / ethical / logistical perspective (For example: Is local government allowed to impose a particular restriction? Are there enough facilities to allow a proposed new intervention? Are these interventions ethical?) Of course, we do not expect you to be an expert on all ethical, legal, and logistical matters – just be sensitive to, and mention, where certain ethical / legal / logistical challenges may need to be addressed to make the proposal feasible.
Your paper should be roughly 5-7 pages (double spaced). Naturally, a project like this does not have “right” or “wrong” answers. We are looking for behavioral insights and creativity, and effective research and argumentation relying on the rich material you’ve encountered throughout the semester. Please submit a well-crafted and carefully argued document. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO ACCESS Thaler, Richard, and Cass Sunstein. Chapters 4-8, Nudge: The Final Edition. 2021. Please mostly refer to this.
