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Everyday Life Politics and Public Policy

Misperception of Social Norms given out by the market-based logic

One of the most pivotal changes that unfolded during the past three decades was the reach of markets and market values into spheres of life traditionally held sway over by nonmarket norms. Healthcare, education, public safety, and environmental protection are some examples of the sectors where the use of market logic was for the most […]

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Everyday Life

More insects, less bias: Towards overcoming cultural differences

An overconsumption of meat and increasing pressure on land and water resources is making it challenging to feed a population that is growing at a faster pace than the food supply chain. The over-exploitation of agricultural resources and the natural ecosystem is contributing to severe issues such as global warming, food insecurity and mineral depletion. […]

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Business World

Failing to fail: behavioral insights behind startup failure

How to succeed in a startup business? Well, there is no cookie-cutter approach that works universally. Every business has a set of unique characterizing elements and has to find its optimal organizational balance. Notwithstanding the uniqueness of the success factors, which sometimes can be summarized with “luck”, there is an often overlooked commonality behind startup business failures which can be analyzed through behavioral lenses.  A well-known statistic is that 9 out of […]

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Everyday Life

How to do better in your next exam session

It is always in the middle of exam session that you remember how tiring and boring studying can be. It is even more unnerving when, after studying day and night for weeks you do not get the results you hoped for. How did it happen, you might ask yourself, after all the work I have put into […]

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Our Work

Scaring the fish away: behavioral insights into talent recruitment

The job recruitment process is a game. Precisely, a signaling game with asymmetric information. Hoping for a perfect match, both the job seekers and the companies looking for new talent signal their attractiveness to each other. Neglecting the in between the lines signals that are conveyed in job advertisements can deter top candidates from applying and reduce the diversity of the company’s biggest asset – […]

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Our Work

Into the mind of Mr. X

The idea for this article was born scrolling through my Facebook home page during the last months. Without doing it on purpose, my attention was captured every time by the posts of one of my Facebook contacts, who will be called Mr. X for privacy reasons. Mr. X is an avid Facebook user, publisher of […]

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Our Work Politics and Public Policy

Elections Special

Are we really in control of our voting behaviour? A behavioral insight on voting preferences and media influence by Valentina Saponara and Enrico Grassi The upcoming US election has the world holding its breath: soon American citizens will cast their vote and shape the future of one of the most relevant actors on the international […]

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Our Work

Fighting Coronavirus with Behavioural Economics

Why cant people just follow the rules? A look at the biases behind irrational behaviour in the midst of a pandemic Over the past few decades, behavioural economics has exploded as a field of study, not only enriching basic economic models, but also yielding novel insights into the cognitive predispositions of humans. In fact, these […]

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Book Reviews

Book Review: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow is the book that every behavioural economics enthusiast should read at least once in their lifetime. The author is nothing less than Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist awarded with the Nobel prize in economics in 2002 for his work on human judgement and decision making under uncertainty, which combines psychological research with […]