Vlog/Podcast with Prof. Daniel Markovits (Yale) about the Concept of Democratizing Behavioral Economics

Behavioral economics — arising from the insight that people make recognizable, systematic mistakes — has revolutionized policymaking. For example, in governments around the world, including the US, teams of experts have recently arisen to harness these insights, promising to do things like increase retirement savings. But there is a problem: Economic experts do not look or think like the rest of the population. They are deeply unrepresentative demographically and have quite different policy views.

In this episode of the CLE's vlog series, Prof. Alexander Stremitzer (ETH Zurich) talks to Prof. external page Daniel Markovits (Yale) about a new approach to behavioral economics called "external page democratic law and economics", a concept developed by Markovits and Prof. external page Zachary D. Liscow (Yale). Rather than dictating what the right policy or action is, they suggest that behavioral economists instead inform representative samples of ordinary people about the evidence and let them decide for themselves. Those decisions, rather than experts’ opinions alone, should then inform policymakers.