Dr Matteo Galizzi QUE.3.16

This course is available on the MSc in Behavioural Science, MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology, MSc in Psychology of Economic Life, MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology and MSc in Social and Public Communication. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

No pre-requisites required.

The course aims to introduce to students the main principles, methods, measures, and insights of behavioural sciences, and the key state-of-the-art applications to health economics, policy, practice, and management. The course is designed to enhance students’ abilities to apply rigorously and critically behavioural science tools to concrete challenges in the health and healthcare area. It covers principles of behavioural science; heterogeneity and behavioural economics; behavioural health economics and policy; methods of behavioural science; behavioural experiments in health (field, lab, lab-field, online, mobile); behavioural data linking; measures of behavioural science; risk preferences and health; time preferences and health; social preferences and health; behavioural insights for information policies in health; financial and non-financial incentives in health; behaviourally supercharged incentives in health; nudging behavioural change in health; behavioural spillovers in health; behavioural insights for regulation and taxation in health, healthcare, and risky health behaviours; behavioural insights for healthy behaviours (diet and nutrition, physical exercise, alcohol abuse, tobacco and drug use, medication, screening, infectious diseases, vaccination); behavioural insights for blood and organ donations; behavioural insights for health practice, management, and policy challenges.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the LT.

The course is delivered in Lent Term over 10 lectures of 1 hour (1 per week, over weeks 1-5, and 7-11) and 10 weekly seminar sessions of 1 hour (1 per week, over weeks 1-5, and 7-11). Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

Students will be expected to work in small groups to produce a presentation in the LT, in which they will propose a design and implementation of a possible behavioural science intervention in health.

-Charness G, Gneezy U (2009) Incentives to exercise. Econometrica, 77(3), 909-931.

-Dolan P, Galizzi MM (2015) Like ripples on a pond: behavioural spillovers and their consequences for research and policy. Journal of Economic Psychology, 47, 1-16.

-Galizzi MM (2014). What is really behavioural in behavioural health policy? And, does it work? Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 36(1), 25-60.

-Galizzi MM, Wiesen D (2017). Behavioural experiments in health: An introduction. Health economics, 26(S3), 3-5.

-Galizzi MM, Wiesen D (2018). Behavioural Experiments in Health Economics. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance. Oxford University Press.

-Hanoch Y, Barnes AJ, Rice T (2017). Behavioral Economics and Healthy Behaviors. Routledge.

-Roberto CA, Kawachi I (2016). Behavioral Economics and Public Health. Oxford University Press.

-Schwartz JA, Chapman GB (1999). Are more options always better? The attraction effect in physicians' decisions about medications. Medical Decision Making, 19, 315-323.

-Volpp K, Loewenstein G et al. (2008). Financial incentive-based approaches to weight loss. Journal of the American Medical Association, 300, 2631-2637.

Coursework (100%, 3000 words) in the LT.

Students will be expected to write a 3,000 word report to be submitted individually at the end of LT, which will build on the individual contribution to the groupwork undertaken as part of the formative assignment.