PhD Defence Daphne Truijens

On Thursday 8 June, Daphne Truijens will defend her PhD thesis entitled “Behavioral policies, evidence, and expertise".

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the evidence for behavioral policies. Such evidence for behavior change is subject to interpretation and debate. This thesis provides insights into how both the empirical evidence for behavioral policies (e.g., the experiments) and normative aspects of their interpretation (e.g., rationality evaluations) are generated and what this implies for evidence-based policymaking and policymakers. The central question is: on which underlying normative and empirical assumptions is the interpretation of evidence for behavioral policies based?

I focus on the role of agents’ perspectives in the interpretation of decision-making. In particular, I investigate to what extent behavioral evidence supports the idea that behavioral policies rectify the outcomes of people’s decision-making failures. The evidence may show that people change their behavior after seemingly irrelevant changes in their environment, but not why they do so. It may also display that people behave irrationally, but only based on assumptions about people’s views of the choice options and according to very specific and highly debated theories about rationality. I argue that interpreting the existing experimental evidence in the right way is crucial to develop successful behavioral policies. Failing to consider the controversial aspects of behavioral evidence and expertise could lead to policymaking that is inefficient, ineffective and which may even backfire.