I’m going to mainly focus on a career in the private sector, doing applied work. If you want to know about government work, ask Maya Shankar or Owain Service. If what I’ve written doesn’t answer your questions, ask me. Just have something specific and interesting to ask about! But first, some screeners: Is this a long-term interest? Is this something you want to dedicate at least a decade to? It should be, otherwise you’ll get out-competed by others.
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
Provides comprehensive information on the dynamics of income, employment, household composition, and government program participation.
The ABCs of Financial Education: Experimental Evidence on Attitudes, Behavior, and Cognitive Biases
This paper uses a large-scale field experiment in India to study attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive constraints that can stymie the link between financial education and financial outcomes. The study complements financial education with (i) financial incentives on a financial literacy test to affect participant motivation, (ii) financial goal setting to provide a psychological nudge, and (iii) personalized financial counseling to enhance the intensity of treatment. The analysis finds no impact of financial incentives on learning but significant effects of both goal setting and counseling on real financial outcomes. These results identify important complements to financial education that can bridge the gap between financial knowledge and behavior change. Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2819 . This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance.
Right on Time: How Cash Helps Families Move Through Life's Transitions - Economic Security Project
Executive Summary Over the past decade, more than 250 guaranteed income pilots, programs that provide people with regular cash with no restrictions on how they use it, have run across 40 states and the District of Columbia. That research has revealed many learnings, and this report focuses on one clear takeaway: cash has its largest…
Passive Income Ideas That Actually Work (No, You Don't Need to Be Rich First)
Explore practical passive income ideas that can generate revenue even while you sleep. Start today with the right approach.
Behaviorally Informed Policies for Household Financial Decisionmaking
Low incomes, limited financial literacy, fraud, and deception are just a few of the many intractable economic and social factors that contribute to the financial difficulties that households face today. Addressing these issues directly is difficult and costly. But poor financial outcomes also result from systematic psychological tendencies, including imperfect optimization, biased judgments and preferences, and susceptibility to influence by the actions and opinions of others. Some of these psychological tendencies and the problems they cause may be countered by policies and interventions that are both low cost and scalable. We detail the ways that these behavioral factors contribute to consumers’ fiancial mistakes and suggest a set of interventions that the federal government, in its dual roles as regulator and employer, could feasibly test or implement to improve household financial outcomes in a variety of domains: retirement, short-term savings, debt management, the take-up of government benefits, and tax optimization.
Wave: Small Business Software - Wave Financial
Create beautiful invoices, accept online payments, and make accounting easy—all in one place—with Wave’s suite of money management tools.
Misbehaving: the making of behavioral economics
Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career s…
Tesseract Academy for the Public Sector - Research, AI & Public Sector Delivery Partner
Research-backed AI, data science, public engagement, survey design, and policy advisory for UK public sector.
The Monsters, Inc. Argument for Unconditional Basic Income
How to convert an economy based on fear to one based on joy
SJ · Home
I’m a designer and developer by training and trade. I spend most of my spare time reading about business, finance and crypto. If this combination interests you, welcome to my corner of the internet. This is where I share my reading list, investment updates, and software adventures.
5: Behavioural biases in personal finance
Behavioural economics merges psychology and economics to explore systematic deviations in financial decision-making from traditional economic models. This chapter examines key biases such as mental accounting, present bias, planning fallacy, and misunderstanding of risk, which influence spending, saving, investing, and insuring decisions. Demonstrating the interplay of cognitive biases and heuristics highlights why individuals make suboptimal choices despite financial literacy and resource capacity. Strategies like goal-setting, commitment devices, and education interventions are evaluated, focusing on their limitations and potential for addressing these biases. The chapter concludes by emphasising the need for systemic changes, such as policy-level interventions and financial regulation, to complement behavioural interventions and address structural barriers to better financial decisions. Future research directions are suggested, including tailoring interventions, exploring technology's role, and integrating systemic solutions to support sustainable financial well-being.
Algorithms As a Vehicle to Reflective Equilibrium: Behavioral Economics 2.0
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
I will be presenting in the NBER Household Finance Summer Institute session this Friday at 1pm on "Using AI in Household Finance Research: A Practical Guide." nber.org/conferences/si-2026-household…
SI 2026 Household Finance
www.nber.org
Robin Berjon
"Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk About It)" by Elizabeth Anderson A much-needed reframing to show that government can take place in private contexts too. She focuses on employers in the US, but it works well for tech monopolies in the digital space too.
