Beyond Nudges: Behavioral Based Evidence Based Public Policies

Abstract

Nudges are one of the most accepted public policy instruments, due to the success of some recent interventions and its relative low implementation cost. Nevertheless, in order to achieve the modernization of our public administration towards evidence based policies, we should embrace Behavioral Economics in a more ambitious manner, not limiting ourselves to nudges, but including other instruments, such as incentives designed taking into account the wide array of human motivations and the array of individual decision making processes. Experimentation, public access to administrative data, and policy evaluation are steps that will go hand in hand with the adoption of behavioral economics by the Spanish public administration.