SP434      Half Unit
Behavioural Public Policy

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The application of behavioural economics and behavioural science to public policy issues has been, and continues to be, a major theme in the policy discource internationally. This course offers students a thorough grounding in the theory and findings that define behavioural economics, from the major violations of standard rational choice theory to prospect theory and the theories of human motivation. The course goes on to consider the conceptual policy frameworks that have been informed by behavioural economics, with examples - so-called nudge, shove and budge policies - illustrated so as to highlight how these frameworks are appliedin practice. Students will also be exposed to the different behavioural-informed schools of thought that have prescribed divergent paths for public sector governance.

15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

All teaching will be in accordance with the LSE Academic Code which specifies a minimum of two hours taught contact time per week when the course is running in the Autumn Term (AT) and/or Winter Term (WT). Social Policy courses are predominantly taught through a combination of in-person lectures and In person classes/seminars. Further information will be provided by the Course Convenor in the first lecture of the course.

Essay plan in Winter Term Week 5

All students will be required to present work in progress on their summative assignments during seminar class time. In addition, students will be required to present to the course convener a one page plan for their summative assessment, on which they will receive feedback.

• J. Le Grand (2006) Motivation, Agency and Public Policy: of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens. Revised paperback edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• J. Le Grand (2007) The Other Invisible Hand; Delivering Public Services through Choice and Competition. Oxford: Princeton University Press
• R. Thaler and C. Sunstein (2008) Nudge: Improving Decision about Health, Wealth and Happiness New Haven: Yale University Press
• Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational : the hidden forces that shape our decisions. London, HarperCollins.
• Kahneman, D. (2011)  Thinking, Fast and Slow   London,  Allen Lane
• P. Dolan et al (2010) Mindspace: Influencing Behaviour through Public Policy. London: Cabinet Office and the Institute for Government.

Project (100%) in Spring Term Week 1

The summative assessment is a project write-up of 3,000 words, where students design their own behavioural public policies.