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- 9th Nov 2016
Job opportunities in London
Technical Lead, Data Science and Ventures Permanent: 39 hours per week Salary range: £35,000 - £45,000 pro rata per annum, plus benefits Based in Westminster The Behavioural Insights Team is looking for an exceptional candidate (or candidates) to work across our BI Ventures and Data Science teams as a Technical…
- Blog
- 11th Nov 2016
The soft drinks levy is working before it has even been applied
Back in March of this year, the government announced the introduction of a soft drinks levy (or 'sugar tax'). At the time, we published a blog pointing out that the levy’s success would depend greatly on how producers responded to it. Although shifting customer purchases is important, we predicted that…
- Blog
- 14th Nov 2016
Transformation and Inspiration - the EEF at 5
This week the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) celebrated its fifth birthday. Over the course of a few short years, the EEF has achieved truly remarkable things. One hundred randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in education have been commissioned by the EEF in that time – orders of magnitude more than had…
- Blog
- 16th Nov 2016
London-based job opportunities
Advisor, Employment and Welfare Policy Permanent: 39 hours per week Salary range: £30,000 - £45,000 per annum, plus benefits Based in Westminster The Employment and Welfare team is looking for an exceptional candidate to join as an Advisor. The successful applicant is likely to work on projects that aim to apply behavioural science to…
- Blog
- 24th Nov 2016
London PhD Scholarships and job opportunities in New York
The BIT PhD Scholarships Programme is now taking applications for 2017. We are looking to award two scholarships in collaboration with the School of Public Policy, University College London (UCL). Each scholarship will run from autumn 2017 for three years. The scholarships can focus on any area of behavioural science and public policy, but strong…
- Blog
- 25th Nov 2016
Making room for expertise in democracy
There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about whether expertise is falling out of fashion. It was a theme picked up in a lecture on Tuesday by Beth Noveck, Enough of experts? Data, democracy and the future of expertise. Beth has spent time in both the White House,…
- Blog
- 30th Nov 2016
Going global: A new report on applying behavioural insights to health
This blog is also available in Spanish Testing for diabetes can be a pain. The cheapest and most effective test requires people to fast for up to 10 hours beforehand. And if people lack any symptoms, they may also have little awareness or motivation to get tested in a timely…
- Blog
- 8th Dec 2016
Embracing insights from many sources
Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) often represent the best, fastest and most statistically straightforward way of determining whether a new intervention works. This is why RCTs are central to what we do at the Behavioural Insights Team. We can’t be sure that an intervention is going to translate from a lab…
- Blog
- 15th Dec 2016
Behavioural finance in the Lab
Some of the earliest and most impressive applications of behavioural science focused on helping people to save for their retirement. In particular, there is the pioneering work of Brigitte Madrian, David Laibson, John Beshears and James Choi demonstrating the impact of automatically enrolling employees into workplace pension plans, and Richard…
- Blog
- 20th Dec 2016
A Christmas Carol: inspiration for behavioural interventions?
Those familiar with Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol will know that the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve comes about from an unusual, yet remarkably successful, behavioural intervention. Scrooge (a notorious miser) is visited by four ghosts over the course of one night who show him his past, present…