ASTK15713U SUMMER17: Nudge, Nudge. Information-based governance and policy design

Nudging has become the avant-garde of public governance and policy design since Thaler & Sunstein published their roadmap to more ‘health, wealth and happiness’ in 2008. We will spend one week of summer discussing the potentials and problems of the nudging agenda on a theoretical as well as a practical level. The summer school will deal with questions of the basic theory and rationality behind nudging, as well as concrete instruments and tools used in concrete nudging interventions and the construction of so-called ‘choice architecture’ across different policy fields. In contrast to the emphasis on behavioral economics and social psychology advanced by the nudging itself, we will proceed from the basic claim that nudging is to a large degree a modified version of the well-known forms information-based approach to policy instrumentation. However, we will also see that nudging interventions present a more radical and potentially innovative approach to information-based policy design.

Day 1: Nudging, ’libertarian paternalism’ and the third way + forget about behavioral economics

Day 2: Governance, the tools of government and nudging as policy design

Day 3: The public information campaign 2.0 + six techniques of nudging interventions

Day 4: Health + environment, energy and global warming

Day 5: Labor, savings and social risk management + education