Behavioral Game Theory

Recently I read the book Climate Change Begins at Home by David Reay. It makes for an entertaining read and persuasively argues that every family can substantially cut its greenhouse gas emissions. I particularly liked how the book puts the focus of tackling climate change on individual behaviour. Way too much climate change debate is about governments making agreements, even though such agreements are basically worthless. Governments can do little: it's individuals that pollute, and it's individuals that need to pollute less!         The arguments Reay put forward in his book did, however, seem a bit naïve when it came to economics. He made the case, which one often sees, that cutting back on emissions is a win-win scenario. If a family uses the car less, uses the air conditioning less, goes for a local holiday rather than flying half way around the world, buys less plastic gadgets, and so on, then...

A recent issue of Nature had a special report on obesity. One of the articles looked at the merits of  behavioural interventions in tackling obesity and came to a somewhat pessimistic conclusion. In particular, the article pointed to evidence that behavioural interventions produce only short term gains - weight loss over the first 6 to 12 months but creeping weight gain thereafter. This is bad news for anyone wanting to tackle obesity. It also raises questions about the general benefits of behavioural interventions.         And this second point is especially interesting given that behaviour change is very much a buzz idea at the moment. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have done most to publicize the idea with their book Nudge , but they are by no means the only advocates. The popularity of behaviour change stems largely from its seeming simplicity and cost effectiveness: people's decisions are effected by the way choices are framed and so framing choices ...