The use of behavioral sciences in government has expanded and matured in the last decade. Since the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) has been part of this movement, the authors sketch out the history of the team and the current state of behavioral public policy, recognising that other works have already told this story in detail. The authors then set out two clusters of issues that have emerged from the work at BIT. The first cluster concerns current challenges facing behavioral public policy: The long-term effects of interventions; repeated exposure effects; problems with proxy measures; spillovers and general equilibrium effects and unintended consequences; cultural variation; ‘reverse impact’; and the replication crisis. The second cluster concerns opportunities: influencing the behavior of government itself; scaling interventions; social diffusion; nudging organisations; and dealing with thorny problems. The authors conclude that the field will need to address these challenges and take these opportunities in order to realize the full potential of behavioral public policy.
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