Behavioural Economics

We are the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government, or BETA.

We are the Australian Government’s central unit for behavioural economics in public policy. Working with our Research Director Professor Robert Slonim, we use economics, science and psychology to improve policy outcomes.

Rather than expecting people to redesign their lives around government, our work encourages people-centred design, which means simpler, clearer and faster public services.

Mission

BETA’s mission is to build behavioural economics capability across the public service and drive its use in policy design by testing what works, where and in what context.

To do this, we work with our partner agencies to:

build APS capability to support greater use of behavioural economics in policy-making
provide behavioural economics expertise on a number of projects that apply and test policy, programme and administrative designs
establish links between the APS and the behavioural economics research and practitioner community, here and overseas.

Projects

BETA is committed to being open and transparent about the work that we do. We are working across government on a range of projects to trial the use of behavioural economics.

We aim to disclose our trials and their methods ahead of time. Once a trial is complete, we aim to make our findings public. Trials will be marked as ‘Completed’ once the results become available, via downloadable reports.

These practices will ensure greater accountability and transparency. They will also facilitate the sharing of knowledge with our fellow researchers and other interested parties.

Why we need a Behavioural Economics team

Traditional policy makers assume people will always make the best decision possible, and have no shortage of willpower or brain power. However, research and evidence tells us this isn’t always the case.

There is often a gap between what people intend to do and what they actually end up doing. For example, we know when people are in ‘auto-pilot’ they will often use shortcuts and prefer to rely on stereotypes. In other cases people won’t act on their best intentions because they feel overloaded with choices.

That’s why it’s important to put real human behaviour at the centre of policy and programme design. Designing policy should be based on a sound understanding of human behaviour. This goes hand-in-hand with BETA’s commitment to test those designs, building our understanding of what works and when we need to adapt our approach.

We are making sure our government policies, programmes and services reflect real decision-making and achieve the best possible outcomes for Australians.

Experience has shown that inexpensive improvements based on a better understanding of human behaviour can increase efficiency within the public service and help people put their good intentions into action. Initiatives like plain packaging of cigarettes, mysuper and pre-filled tax forms were designed with real human behaviour in mind.

In NSW, behavioural economics helped to get injured workers back to health and work more quickly by simplifying processes, using positive messaging and personal commitment techniques.

In the UK, behavioural economics helped people realise their intention to register as an organ donor.