Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages are growing in popularity and have generated an
active public debate. Are they a good idea? If so, how high should they be? Are such taxes …

This chapter surveys work in behavioral public economics, emphasizing the normative
implications of non-standard decision making for the design of welfare-improving and/or …

Many have argued that digital technologies such as smartphones and social media are
addictive. We develop an economic model of digital addiction and estimate it using a …

Nudges influence behavior by changing the environment in which decisions are made,
without restricting the menu of options and without altering financial incentives. This paper …

Behavioral development economics applies theories and ideas from psychology and
behavioral economics to the study of questions in development economics. We begin by …

How much do different monetary and non-monetary motivators induce costly effort? Does
the effectiveness line up with the expectations of researchers and with results in the …

We review research that measures time preferences—ie, preferences over intertemporal
trade—offs. We distinguish between studies using financial flows, which we call “money …

We study the effect of financial resources on decision-making. Low-income US households
are randomly assigned to receive an online survey before or after payday. The survey …

Intertemporal tradeoffs play a key role in many personal decisions and policy questions. We
describe models of intertemporal choice, identify empirical regularities in choice, and pose …

While present bias is an old idea, it only took hold in economics following David Laibson's
(1994) dissertation. Over the past 20 years, research has led to a much better theoretical …