Human behaviour drives the actions of consumers, workers and businesses, and in doing so, drives the performance of the wider economy. We want to improve access to high quality work; increase business productivity and growth; and improve macroeconomic policy to the benefit of citizens and businesses across the economy.
Featured work
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"What would happen if your website was attacked?"
It's hard for businesses — particularly SMEs — to know when and how to patch their software. In collaboration with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), we ran two trials to help tackle this problem. The first trial encouraged businesses to sign up for a free website security scan. The second encouraged businesses that signed up to patch any vulnerabilities we detected, and provided advice on how to patch.
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Gender bias and performance feedback: a randomised control trial
In order to achieve gender equality in the workplace there needs to be a focus on reducing bias in, and improving the quality of, performance feedback for women. In this study we analysed the language used in 360 degree feedback reviews carried out between 2018 and 2019 for 4,328 senior managers in a large UK public sector organisation.
More on work and economics
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Simply telling men that their peers support parental leave and flexible working, increases their intention to share care
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Supporting men to take longer parental leave and work flexibly
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Making Markets Better
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Targeted referrals can improve gender equality in recruitment
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Flexibility by default: Increasing the advertisement of part-time or job-share options
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Facilitating return to the labour market with a novel CV format intervention
