Podcast Episode - Behavioral Economics with David Ramm
On this episode of New from the Peak, we hear from David Ramm about Behavioral Economics, how we can use these concepts to improve services and how it impacts our daily lives. As a compliment to the episode, David has provided us with the following, which includes some great resources to learn more about the topic.
This episode is available now. You can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Anchor and more. As always… listen all the way to the end for some bonus content. (#outtakes)
Where the GPS Form Factory Comes From: An Introduction to Behavioral Economics and the Human Services
MDRC’s SIMPLER framework for developing behaviorally informed interventions.
We started the GPS Form Factory because we knew first-hand the benefits of thoughtfully composed forms, letters, and other communications. Plain language is part of what makes those documents work. Good design also matters.
But even careful discussions of how language and design work together often don’t get at what might be the most valuable focus of behaviorally informed communications: its insistence on motivating individuals to action.
Forms exist for people to complete them. And most of the letters we encounter from human services programs are intended to urge people toward some next step:
Send in documentation
Come to an office or call a customer service representative
Recognize that, based on current information, a case may face a significant change
Our latest News from the Peak podcast gives a sense of how the GPS Form Factory team thinks about behavioral economics and its application to human services programs.
To supplement that discussion here are some particularly valuable resources on the field, with an emphasis their application to child support:
Foundational Work in the Field
The behavioral design methodology developed by ideas42. This has been widely adopted by behavioral economics practitioners and is the basis for our approach at GPS
Richard Thaler’s essay “Toward a Positive Theory of Consumer Choice” (which in Thaler’s mind could apparently also be called “Stupid Shit People Do”)
Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir’s Scarcity
Behavioral Economics Organizations or Programs Focused on Public Service Work
Child Support-Related Applications
The final report of the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement’s Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services (BICS) demonstration grant
An overview of the work carried out under ACF’s Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation’s Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-sufficiency (BIAS) project
The detail-rich compendium of behavioral materials created for the BIAS project
I also wanted to make sure listeners look into the Access to Justice Lab’s great work on debt collection default that led to one of the papers referred to in the podcast.
This also seems like a good time to acknowledge that some of the more striking claims about behavioral economics—particularly approaches described as nudges or priming—should probably be taken with a grain of salt, especially as they might be applied to the human services.
We can’t nudge or prime Americans out of poverty. That will take more substantial and sustained interventions.
But our hope is that the GPS Form Factory will make it easier for governments and other public service-oriented organizations to to explain to the public what we need them to do and motivate them to do it.