Some current reading

I mentioned on twitter that it would be good to speak to people about some particularly interesting papers and books. Below a sample of things I am reading at the moment. I am reading a lot and attempting to write on behavioural public policy, ethics, and mental health. I might do another post on potential beach reading but below some potential pieces for a journal club session over zoom coffee. 

Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein's "Noise" is becoming a major bestseller. I have used a number of the background papers in teaching for the last few years and am not surprised it is generating such an impact. 

Knapp and Wong's recent review of the current state of economics and mental health research is a strong background doc for a discussion of a rapidly evolving and important area of research. 

Lucas et al's recent paper "A Direct Comparison of the Day Reconstruction Method and the Experience Sampling Method" (now out in JPSP) is the most developed work to date on the comparison between those methods and potentially important for a wide range of work. 

Hattke, et al's recent Public Administration Review paper on "Emotional responses to bureaucratic red tape" is fascinating approach to understanding a key human element of public policy. 

Enjoying most of the papers in Behavioural Public Policy, a recently developed journal that is doing a very strong job at providing an intellectual base for the development of this literature. Among many papers, one that I enjoyed reading was Vugts et al's detailed review of different concepts of autonomy in ethics of nudging debate.  I am keeping an ongoing reading list on the ethics of nudging literature and the more general ethical debate and am thinking of ways both formally and informally to find ways to discuss and develop this literature. 

Recent AER paper by Dynarski et al "Closing the Gap: The Effect of Reducing Complexity and Uncertainty in College Pricing on the Choices of Low-Income Students" is a really strong example of integration of behavioural work into the evaluation of a major public policy change. 

Nature Human Behavior is another relatively recently launched journal that is producing many really interesting papers. One paper that I would particularly like to discuss is "How behavioural sciences can promote truth, autonomy and democratic discourse online"

Interesting to see a recent review by Fabian and Pykett of the ethics of well-being policy in Perspectives on Psychological Science.