Social problems in many domains, including health, education, social relationships, and the workplace, have their origins in human behavior. The documented links between behavior and social problems have compelled governments and organizations to prioritize and mobilize efforts to develop effective, evidence-based means to promote adaptive behavior change. In recognition of this impetus, The Handbook of Behavior Change provides comprehensive coverage of contemporary theory, research, and practice on behavior change. It summarizes current evidence-based approaches to behavior change in chapters authored by leading theorists, researchers, and practitioners from multiple disciplines, including psychology, sociology, behavioral science, economics, philosophy, and implementation science. It is the go-to resource for researchers, students, practitioners, and policy makers looking for current knowledge on behavior change and guidance on how to develop effective interventions to change behavior.

Behavioral Public Economics shows how standard public economics can be improved using insights from behavioral economics. Public economics typically lists four market failures that may justify government intervention in markets --imperfect competition (or natural monopoly), externalities, public goods, and asymmetric information. Under the rational choice paradigm ('agents choose what is best for them'), public economics has examined the welfare effects of policy. Recent research in behavioral economics highlights a fifth market failure --individuals may make mistakes in pursuing their own well-being. This book calls for a rethinking of assumptions of individual behavior and provides a good foundation for public economic theory. Key Features: 1. Introduces behavioral perspectives into public economics. 2. Explains why economic incentives often undermine social preferences. 3. Reveals that social incentives matter for public policy. The book will began invaluable resource for researchers and postgraduate students in public economics, behavioral economics, and public policy.

Social Incentives: A Life-Span Developmental Approach presents a developmental perspective about universal social goals, one that provides an examination of human motivation over the life span. The book aims to discover the kind of goals people display in their interactions with one another, how to understand them, how are they acquired, and how do they help in understanding human social behavior. Discussions on the theory of social incentives from the point of view of developmental psychology; social motivations during the different stages of life; and the socialization process based on a life-span developmental model of social motivation brings us closer to understanding the topic. Social and developmental psychologists, motivational experts, and clinicians will find the text invaluable.

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

In recent years there have been increasing efforts to use accountability systems based on large-scale tests of students as a mechanism for improving student achievement. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a prominent example of such an effort, but it is only the continuation of a steady trend toward greater test-based accountability in education that has been going on for decades. Over time, such accountability systems included ever-stronger incentives to motivate school administrators, teachers, and students to perform better. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education reviews and synthesizes relevant research from economics, psychology, education, and related fields about how incentives work in educational accountability systems. The book helps identify circumstances in which test-based incentives may have a positive or a negative impact on student learning and offers recommendations for how to improve current test-based accountability policies. The most important directions for further research are also highlighted. For the first time, research and theory on incentives from the fields of economics, psychology, and educational measurement have all been pulled together and synthesized. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education will inform people about the motivation of educators and students and inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems. Education researchers, K-12 school administrators and teachers, as well as graduate students studying education policy and educational measurement will use this book to learn more about the motivation of educators and students. Education policy makers at all levels of government will rely on this book to inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems.

DIE REIHE: SCHRIFTENREIHE ZU ORDNUNGSFRAGEN DER WIRTSCHAFT herausgegeben von Thomas Apolte, Martin Leschke, Albrecht F. Michler, Christian Müller, Rahel M. Schomaker und Dirk Wentzel Die Reihe diskutiert aktuelle ordnungspolitische und institutionenökonomische Fragestellungen. Durch die methodische Vielfalt richtet sie sich an Fachleute, an die Öffentlichkeit und an die Politikberatung.

Mainstream economics has recognized only recently the necessity to incorporate political constraints into economic analysis intended for policy advisors. Incentives and Political Economy uses recent advances in contract theory to build a normative approach to constitutional design in economic environments.The first part of the book remains in the tradition of benevolent constitutional design with complete contracting. It treats politicians as informed supervisors and studies how the Constitution should control them, in particular to avoid capture by interest groups. Incentive theories for the separation of powers or systems of checks and balances are developed.The second part of the book recognises the incompleteness of the constitutional contract which leaves discretion to the politicans selected by the electoral process. Asymmetric information associates information rents with economic policies and the political game becomes a game of costly redistribution of those rents. Professor Laffont investigates the trade-offs between an inflexible constitution which leaves little discretion to politicians but sacrifices ex post efficiency and a constitutionweighted towards ex post efficiency but also giving considerable discretion to politicians to pursue private agendas.The final part of the book reconsiders the modeling of collusion given asymmetric information. It proposes a new approach to characterizing incentives constraints for group behaviour when asymmetric information is non-verifiable. This provides a methodology to characterise the optimal constitutional response to activities of interest groups and to study the design of any institution in which group behavior is important.