Some projects and talks for 2025

My main day job at the moment is still as head of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE. I am five years into a two three-year term of six years. When I started I was struck by how many Department heads in UK universities could tell you how many days they had left in the role and it is still noticeable how quickly some colleagues deteriorate in general sense of calm and cheer when they take on the role at first. I found the first year very tough (newish multi-group Department, learning the ropes at a new place, changing city, covid etc.,) and it has been ok since with some genuine highs in being part of building a very interesting Department in a very vibrant university. I also teach across our undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive education programmes, including co-directing and delivering the foundations course with Chris Krekel on our MSc in Behavioural Science. One aspect of the role I have enjoyed is really deep diving into how to develop different aspects of behavioural science education and we have done quite a few things as a group including developing new student journals, policy simulations, advanced policy seminar formats etc., Certainly won't attempt a lessons learned piece at this stage but for the most part once you deeply realise you could drop dead in the morning and people will just get on with things, you can relax a bit and do your best in most roles.  It has changed my orientation to research and I have not tried to maintain a formal research group alongside the role for the first time in my career (watch this space soon!). Instead I have tried to focus on some "death-bed" projects that I am fairly sure I will do in one form or another for as long as I am healthy enough to do so. Broadly speaking, these are the projects that I would be open to talk about if I am being considered to speak at a seminar or if you happen to meet me in the street. I am afraid I am unlikely to be able to supervise new PhD students in the next 18 months until the Department head role finishes and current students graduate. 

1. History of Behavioural Science: I have also been working on a history of behavioural science for a very long time at this stage. At the very least it will lead to one paper this year as I have been asked to give the keynote lecture at the international economic psychology conference. At the moment, I have a version where I go through the development of concepts like hyperbolic discounting and outline the interplay between psychological ideas and later formalisation in behavioural economics. It is being developed for a broad social science audience. I am keeping track of readings and links on this post. This is also informing some ideas for new teaching particularly the potential for a new course in economic psychology. 

2. Valuation of the Past: I talked about this in a post when I was at Stirling in 2016 and I have thought it about regularly since. I will be giving some talks on this topic in 2025 including in Galway on March 7th and hope to finish at least one paper. I am using this post to keep track of some links on this topic.

3. Ethics and Institutionalisation of Behavioural Science: We are continuing to develop the FORGOOD ethics framework along different lines. One has been the development of a formal initiative to develop models of good practice for behavioural science in corporate settings with Annabel Gillard and Bishin Ho (provisional webpage here). Along with Leo Lades, we are continuing to develop the theoretical aspects of the ethics of behavioural science in policy (video of a recent seminar on this here). In particular, we are building the case more explicitly for the advantages of contextual, multi-dimensional, pragmatic ethical appraisals in the policy context. I am continuing to develop the LSE Behavioural Science and the Wider World seminar series and am hoping to embed new ideas about how to have interesting conversations in these areas across countries and sectors. 

4. Psychology of Unemployment: I am continuing to work on the links between unemployment and mental health and the psychology of unemployment more generally, including work with Lucia Macchia and Michael Daly on pain, employment conditions, and well-being more generally and with Sharon Raj and Chris Krekel on time perception. time structure, well-being and unemployment (e.g. working paper here in the new ISER innovation panel document). 

5. Day Reconstruction Methods for Behavioural Public Policy: The Ulysses project continues. I have continued to work with a number of colleagues and students including Kate Laffan, Leo Lades, Michael Daly, and Lucie Martin on developing day reconstruction methods for public policy. My paper with Leo "Self-control failures as judged by themselves" is one of the most interesting papers we have done in this area and a testimony to allowing something to gestate a little bit (about 8 years from start to finish). My paper with Lucie Martin and Orla Doyle in Public Administration Review is also something I have very happy to have seen fully in print and it brings these methods into the study of administrative burdens in public and private settings, an area with a lot more to be done. I was very happy with the paper with Leo and Kate using these methods to examine the contextual predictors of meat consumption. One medium term aim is to develop a solid research group in this area for September 2026 and I am doing some background work on this. 

Recent paper: Improving the management of hospital waiting lists by using nudges in letters: A Randomised controlled trial

Below is the abstract of a recently published with a team of colleagues in Social Science & Medicine. This project has been ongoing since at least 2018 and seeks to improve communication with patients across the Irish Health Service. It is driven by officials in the Irish Department of Health with involvement from academics and researchers in NUIG and ESRI, and input across the hospital and health system more generally. The trial below is a pragmatic trial. The nature of the administrative system did not at the time permit multiple trial arms of a type that would enable isolation of precise mechanisms so the main aim was to combine several elements demonstrating promising effects in the literature into a new letter that could be tested against the status quo. See this page for a detailed description of the policy implications of the trial and results. It is one of several trials and projects ongoing to improve administrative aspects relating to patient interactions in the system (see paper here for a wider summary). The group involved in the project also composed the nucleus of the development of the behavioural change component of the Irish covid response. In general, behavioural science has emerged as a strong capacity for the Irish health system. 

Abstract

Objective

A commonly adopted intervention to help to reduce wait times for hospital treatment is administrative validation, where administrators write to patients to check if a procedure is still required. The did not return (DNR) rate to validation letters is substantial. We tested whether the DNR rate was reduced by introducing nudges to validation letters.

Methods

Participants from eight public hospitals (N = 2855; in 2017) in Ireland were randomized to receive an existing (control group) or a redesigned validation letter including nudges (intervention group).

Results

Participants in the intervention group were less likely not to return it than those in the control group, OR = .756, SE = .069, p = .002. Control and intervention group DNR rates were 23.97% and 19.24%. This is equivalent to 1 in 5 non-responders changing their behaviour because of the redesigned letter.

Conclusions

The redesigned letter increased patient compliance with the validation process. The redesign has subsequently been adopted by public hospitals in Ireland.

Ending Six Years at Irish Central Bank Consumer Advisory Group

I recently completed two three-year terms as a member of the Irish Central Bank Consumer Advisory group. The group was established under legislation from the Irish parliament in 2011 (brief description below) to advise the Central Bank on consumer issues. Below are brief personal reflections.

The role of the Consumer Advisory Group ('CAG') is to advise the Central Bank on the performance of its functions and the exercise of its powers in relation to consumers of financial services including:The effects of the Central Bank's Strategic Plans on consumers of financial services; Initiatives aimed at further enhancing the protection of consumers of financial services; and If the Central Bank so requests, documents, consultation papers or other materials prepared by the Central Bank.

I was appointed while a UCD academic in 2018 and extended to a second term in 2021 and completed my term in December 2024. I attended quarterly meetings and commented on a quite large array of documents received in the intervening periods. As fitting for a body of this nature, the proceedings are transparent and the minutes can be seen on the website.

Many items recurred regularly including the development of the consumer protection code in Ireland, inertia in the health insurance market, vulnerable consumers, central bank strategy, digitalisation, and various impacts of Brexit on financial services. Some interesting event-type issues including the withdrawal of Ulster Bank from the Republic of Ireland, meaning that their customers had to switch their banking in a set time-frame with the ensuing communication and technical issues. Over the period I was there, obviously covid was one event that impacted the agenda and organisation, as did cost-of-living issues arising after the invasion of Ukraine. The development of initiatives like MICAR regulations to deal with the increasing use of cry*t0-currencies and new strategies on firms covered under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive were interesting to witness. Globally, many of these issues will define a lot of our financial lives in the 21st century. 

Some general themes that animated how I worked on this include:

Respect for the secretariat and officials. It will probably be obvious to most people but being respectful and recognising you are working with people who have packed agendas and assuming good faith is something I have always tried to do in policy contexts.

Having said the above, your job as an independent member of an advisory board is not just to nod along and be a passive recipient of information. One input that I made consistently throughout the six-year term was the need for two-way conversation, in particular for the independent committee members to bring agenda items rather than just receive them. This is not as obvious as it sounds. In something like the Central Bank, the officials themselves have far more information and day-to-day understanding of the rhythms of policy and regulation than the independent advisors. Raising issues not part of the standing agenda can sometimes make you feel like you are just chipping in and I am sure there were occasions where I raised issues around questions like emerging digital risks, emerging thinking on consumer behaviour etc., that must have felt like academic flights of fancy to people dealing with established issues with set action points and deadlines. One of my formative experiences was the Irish financial crisis and there are a lot of accounts that put a culture of not breaking consensus in discussions around financial services as being a contributing factor and I was always conscious of that when weighing up whether to raise questions and objections. There were many times led by a strong chair when independent members were able to add agenda items, have separate meetings to the officials, request follow-ups etc., The OECD reviewed consumer protection in Ireland recently including the advisory group and made some more recommendations in that regard, including adding consumer groups.

The third thing that animated my thinking was the belief that behavioural science broadly defined is a useful input. That is maybe not surprising for people who know me and in fairness why else would I be in such a room if not to provide thinking from these areas? But again, there is a line to be walked between relevance to the issues at hand, the capacity of the different groups to absorb evidence, and the quality of the evidence base. As well as the international literature in the area, there is also a strong community of researchers and scholars working on behavioural aspects of regulation and policy in Ireland (e.g. recent annual conference here). Throughout the six years I tried to point where possible to relevant and cogent behavioural work across areas of consumer decision making including pensions, mortgages, insurance, credit cards, novel emerging digital projects etc., and made a number of recommendations and provided some support on Central Bank research in these areas. Behavioural consumer research is a valid input into consumer protection and financial regulation and I was glad to have the opportunity to be part of the policy process in this regard. 

Readings and Links on Utility from the Past

I gave a talk at the annual Irish workshop on economics and psychology on the topic of valuation of the past. I will be giving some talks on this topic in 2025 and hope to finish at least one paper. I am using this post to keep track of some links on this topic. This post will keep track of some background notes and interesting sources and draws from material in previous posts. It will evolve throughout 2025 and is intended purely to aid conversations and not as a fixed view or source document in itself.

I talked about this in a post when I was at Stirling in 2016 and I have thought it about regularly since. I have mentioned Derek Parfit's work on the blog on several occasions (here here here here). He is one of the most influential philosophers of the last century. I first read his work while taking philosophy classes with the Open University in the evening during my only year to date outside of academia working with the ESRI in Dublin. His book Reasons and Persons is a key work in moral philosophy and has had impacts on many other literatures, including starting a number of discussions in behavioural and welfare economics about the nature of intertemporal choice and altruism. This New Yorker profile of him and his work is well worth reading. Shane Frederick's work applied Parfit's ideas to the behavioural economics of intertemporal choice, and these papers are very interesting.The Daily Nous blogpost on Parfit's death contains several links to obituaries and other relevant links. From my part, I cannot recommend Reasons and Persons more highly to people working in behavioural literatures who want to connect areas such as the study of decision-making and intertemporal preference to issues of justice and moral philosophy.

The book is divided into 4 sections: the first "Self-defeating theories" deals with rational choice in the context of interconnected decisions; the second "Rationality and Time" develops an account of inter-temporal choice that questions our received notions of time; the third "Personal Identity" develops an account of identity based not on continuity but rather on mental connectedness; the fourth section discusses the nature of obligation to future generations. The book consists of 20 chapters as well as appendices, totalling 154 subsections each containing important ideas. The four parts of the book also interconnect and build to a startling set of ideas on how we should ethically behave towards others, our future selves, and future generations. The book's concepts have substantial relevance for economists. One example is his well-known "repugnant conclusion" and "non-identity problem", one potential consequence being that future generations should not be factored into policy considerations as different courses of action will simply create different future generations who, providing their existence is preferable to them than non-existence, will be grateful to have been born (Parfit obviously spent a lot of time arguing that we do indeed have an ethical duty to future generations). Most relevant to the type of work we discuss on this blog, Shane Frederick has developed Parfit's ideas on psychological connectedness to future selves in order to examine inter-temporal choice.

The current idea is inspired by Chapter 8 of Reasons and Persons "Different Attitudes to Time" which examines whether we are neutral with regard to time. If we are valuing a reward or punishment should it matter to us whether we receive it now, in the future, or in the past? A large part of behavioural economics is based on the idea that people will value present rewards more highly than future rewards, and that this will be accentuated when the time horizon is nearer. However, the idea of valuing past rewards is not something that is often discussed.

At first glance, it seems like a very odd idea. For example, take the choice below (which is my clumsy construction):

A: You will receive 100 pounds in a week, which you must spend on something you really enjoy.

B: You will learn that you received 100 pounds last week, which you spent on something you really enjoyed and subsequently forgot about.

Assuming that both experiences are equally enjoyable, it seems unlikely that anyone would prefer to have had that experience in the past rather than to have it available as a future option. Arguably, this is because we experience time as moving forward from our present state. An experience that happens to us in the past can only be valuable if it provides us with some element of present or future enjoyment. For example, if B led to us meeting someone that we became friends with, it may be rational to prefer B over the prospect of A. But the key point is that we do not place a value on the experience of B in itself because it is a past event that we no longer remember.

Can we imagine conditions where we value past experiences without regard for any present or future benefits deriving from them? Parfit gives the example of someone learning that their mother had died. Should it matter to the person how she died? Given any information about this refers to something that is in the past, should the person then be indifferent? Consider the case where the person learns that their mother had endured many months of intense pain prior to death and compare this to the case where the person learns that their mother had died painlessly, surrounded by loved ones, after a brief illness. There are many objections one could raise about the precise set-up and I would certainly encourage people to read the very detailed passage by Parfit to fully appreciate the thought experiment. But it seems clear that the valuation of past experience is not just due to future utility considerations, such as the effect on family members and so on. We feel bad that our mother would have suffered and we want to avoid this, even if the event is in the past. Puzzlingly, this probably does not apply to our own past experiences. For example, Parfit discusses the case where you are conscious during a medical operation but then given a drug to make you sleep and forget the experience. On waking up, would it matter to you whether the operation had been painful or not? Compare this to your preferences immediately before the operation.

Below are some examples that came from a brainstorm with research assistants at the time: 

Learning that your husband was a spy.

Learning that you were adopted as a baby but nobody had told you. Now your birth parents are dead but you still have the people you always considered to be your parents.

You consider that you had a very happy childhood. But one day you learn that you were accidentally swapped with another baby in the hospital.

Learning that your partner had cheated on you for years.

Realising that a favourite teacher taught you something fundamentally wrong.

Learning that someone you care about read your diary or personal letters.

Finding out in ten years' time that flossing your teeth has no real health benefit (although it's not harmful).

Finding out years after the fact that you were not the first choice when you were hired.

Finding out that you got your current job despite a previous employer writing a very bad reference for you.

People in Germany finding out years later that their relatives were Nazis or denounced their neighbours during the second world war.

You are now a successful lawyer with a happy family and lots of friends. You meet up with an old friend from school, who tells you that when you were in secondary school, the person you considered your best friend spread horrible rumours about you.

A juror learning that a defendant they found guilty of murder years ago was actually innocent based on DNA evidence (not available at the time of the trial).

Finding out that Santa Claus isn’t real!

The above illustrates the difficulties in separating out pure valuations of the past. Firstly, it is clear that certain past experiences will condition who we are today at some fundamental level. We are not particularly interested in cases, for example, whereby changes in the past would lead to us either not existing or existing in some form for which we have no empathy. One strategy we are looking at is just to take the hypothetical cash tradeoffs outlined above seriously and to estimate discounting rates for the past. The other is to develop a taxonomy of past valuations and to examine mechanisms why people might value the past a) Utilitarian reasons: Our past efforts condition our current wealth etc., b) Learning: even though a past event might have been a bad experience and still affect us negatively, it may have taught us a lesson c) Lived memory: memories we have experienced and that continue to create sensations when we think about them. A lot of complications here including false memories. d) Collective memory: memories embedded in language and culture that we have not directly experienced eg English people that value the 1966 World Cup. Scope here for "existence values" heritage WTP studies. e) Intrinsic value of past: values that relate purely to features of the past event, regardless of its utility for current events eg mother example, privacy invasions, infant abuse, bodily defilement under anaesthetic, etc.,  There is obviously quite a bit of work on identity and memory in relation to the value of the past including some referenced below but utility for the past is arguably too far-fetched to have been developed systematically. The seminars will go in more depth in how we are trying to do this. 

References

Caruso (2010). When the future feels worse than the past: A temporal inconsistency in moral judgment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 139(4), Nov 2010, 610-624.

Kane (2012). Prototypical prospection: future events are more prototypically represented and simulated than past events. European Journal of Social Psychology, Special Issue: Mental Time Travel: Social Psychological Perspectives on a Fundamental Human Capacity Volume 42, Issue 3, pages 354–362, April 2012.

Moller (2002). Parfit on Pains, Pleasures, and the Time of their Occurrence. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 32, Issue 1, 2002.

Parfit (1971). On "The Importance of Self-Identity". The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68, No. 20, Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Oct. 21, 1971), pp. 683-690.

Parfit (1984). Rationality and Time. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 84 (1983 - 1984), pp. 47-82.

Schechtman (2005). Personal Identity and the Past. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, Volume 12, Number 1, March 2005.

Van Boven et al (2007). Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 136(2), May 2007, 289-300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.136.2.289

Yehezkel (2014). Theories of Time and the Asymmetry in Human Attitudes. Ratio, Volume 27, Issue 1, pages 68–83, March 2014.

Study on UK Behavioural Units

Malte Dewies from El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics & Policy at Cambridge is leading a study on behavioural science units in the UK. These include dedicated consultancies and units within large companies, regulators, and government agencies. The project is supported by a team of advisors including me and has been gathering data over the last two months. If you are working in this area in the UK and are willing for you or your organisation to participate, the results will provide very useful information on the state of this area in the UK. Thirty teams have participated so far and we are hoping to have a broad cross-section across sectors and team sizes. The survey takes approximately fifteen minutes. The team is also happy to make the final results available to all participants. The report will also be presented and published in 2025. The link is available here. Only one response per team is needed. Please feel free to contact Malte if you are unsure whether your organisation has already participated. https://lnkd.in/egkw8XXw

IAREP Kahneman Lecture: Economic Psychology and Behavioural Public Policy

Those masterful images because complete / Grew in pure mind but out of what began? / A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, / Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, / Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut / Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone / I must lie down where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

WB Yeats - The Circus Animals' Desertion

I will be giving one of the keynote lectures at the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology in Estonia in June. The talk will outline ideas on the role of economic psychology in the development of current trends in behavioural science and policy.  The main ideas will be outlined at a later date. It will partly offer a reassertion of the importance of eclectic sources of ideas in economic psychology both historically and for the future. As part of the preparation, I will be interviewing a number of people with lived experience of the development of economic psychology. This post will keep track of some background notes and interesting sources. It will evolve throughout the first half of 2025 and is intended purely to aid conversations and not as a fixed view or source document in itself. 

Deep History 

Ashraf, Camerer and Loewenstein's "Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist" provides an account of the ideas of one of the era's main figures.

David Hume also anticipates many of the key ideas in modern behavioural economics. See below for a particularly illustrative passage (the full chapter here) from his Treatise of Human Nature, in which Hume provides an elegant account of present-bias, one of the key concepts in modern behavioural economics. Hume's work, in general, was dense in economic and psychological intuition, with many insights relevant to the types of literature we discuss on this blog.

"In reflecting on any action, which I am to perform a twelve-month hence, I always resolve to prefer the greater good, whether at that time it will be more contiguous or remote; nor does any difference in that particular make a difference in my present intentions and resolutions. My distance from the final determination makes all those minute differences vanish, nor am I affected by any thing, but the general and more discernible qualities of good and evil. But on my nearer approach, those circumstances, which I at first over-looked, begin to appear, and have an influence on my conduct and affections. A new inclination to the present good springs up, and makes it difficult for me to adhere inflexibly to my first purpose and resolution. This natural infirmity I may very much regret, and I may endeavour, by all possible means, to free my self from it. I may have recourse to study and reflection within myself; to the advice of friends; to frequent meditation, and repeated resolution: And having experienced how ineffectual all these are, I may embrace with pleasure any other expedient, by which I may impose a restraint upon myself, and guard against this weakness.".

Quite a lot of work here to be cited on Utilitarianism and the various debates about how to integrate human subjectivity during that period. JS Mill Principle of Political Economy;  An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation by Jeremy Bentham; Utilitarianism by JS Mill. 

General histories of economic psychology 

First chapter of Economic Psychology: an introduction by Erich Kirchler and Erik Hoelzl. In general, the book also provides a template for the textbook scope of modern economic psychology. 

Introduction to Economic Psychology: The Science of Economic Mental Life and Behaviour by Rob Ranyard, Vera Rita De Mello Ferreira. 

The work of George Katona at the Survey Research Centre at Michigan and the work of Herbert Simon at Carnegie-Mellon is described in this 2003 Journal of Socio-economics article by Hamid Hosseini. The article also provides information and links to a range of other interesting papers and contributions from the first half of the 20th century.

Histories of Behavioural Economics 

Camerer, C. F., and Loewenstein, G. (2003) “Behavioral economics: Past, present, future,” in Camerer, C. F., Loewenstein, G., and Rabin, M. (eds.) Advances in Behavioral Economics. Roundtable Series in Behavioral Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 3–51

Behavioral Economics: Policy Impact and Future Directions. Chapter on Development of Behavioural Economics. 

Laibson, D., and Zeckhauser, R. (1998) “Amos Tversky and the ascent of behavioral economics.” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 16 (1): 7–47.

Rabin (2002), "A perspective on psychology and economics," European Economic Review.

Richard Thaler's MisBehaving is a gripping account of the development of behavioural economics in top US universities in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Niels Geiger The Rise of Behavioral Economics: A Quantitative Assessment

Abstract

This article is devoted to the issue of operationalizing and empirically measuring the development of behavioral economics, focusing on trends in the academic literature. The main research goal is to provide a quantitative, bibliometric assessment to answer the question of whether the relative importance of behavioral economics has increased over the past decades. After an introduction and a short summary of the history of behavioral economics, several studies are laid out and evaluated. The results generally provide a quantitative confirmation of the story of a rise of behavioral economics that can be found in the literature, and add some notable additional insights.

Hands, D. W. (2010) “Economics, psychology and the history of consumer choice theory.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 34: 633–48.

This paper examines elements of the complex place/role/influence of psychology in the history of consumer choice theory. The paper reviews, and then challenges, the standard narrative that psychology was 'in' consumer choice theory early in the neoclassical revolution, then strictly 'out' during the ordinal and revealed preference revolutions, now (possibly) back in with recent developments in experimental, behavioural and neuroeconomics. The paper uses the work of three particular economic theorists to challenge this standard narrative and then provides an alternative interpretation of the history of the relationship between psychology and consumer choice theory.

Esther-Mirjam Sent "Behavioral Economics: How Psychology Made Its (Limited) Way Back Into Economics"

Contemporary Overviews of Economic Psychology 

George Katona 1954 Scientific American Article on Economic Psychology

Webley, Burgoyne, Lea, and Young 2001 - The Economic Psychology of Everyday Life 

Handbook of Economic Psychology (1988) W. Fred Raaij, Gery M. Veldhoven, Karl-Erik Wärneryd.

Earl, P. E. (1990) 'Economics and Psychology: A Survey', Economic Journal, 100: 718-55.

Illustrative Canonical Works 

Edgeworth's Mathematical Psychics is a classic work and is eerily relevant to modern debates about decision-making despite being published in 1881. David Colander's excellent JEP article on Edgeworth and Fisher is well worth reading.

Keynes' General Theory set out many of the themes that would be pursued by scholars such as George Katona in developing the field of psychological economics. 

Frank H, Knight's classic "Risk, Uncertainty and Profit" provides ideas on the role of uncertainty in economics that continue to be highly relevant.

Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation" is a key work across several interdisciplinary disciplines in Economics. It contains a vast range of insights into the development of market societies and the psychological, cultural, and other aspects of market behaviour.

The work of Maurice Allais was written exclusively in French and not widely translated making it all the more remarkable he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988. A study of Allais would require a lot of time, patience and linguistic ability but he is clearly an important figure in the history of economic thought relevant to behavioural economics. Paul Samuelson famously stated that “Had Allais's earliest writings been in English, a generation of economic theory would have taken a different course.”

As much a warning about excess as anything else, Watson (1913) "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it" is the classic statement of the behaviourist view of psychology.

Simmel's Philosophy of Money is often cited as a historical reference in modern papers on economic psychology. It deals with a staggering array of questions on the philosophy and implications of using money as the medium of exchange.

How the Divorce Happened 

Lewin "Economics and Psychology: Lessons for Our Own Day From the Early Twentieth Century" documents the interaction between the development of neo-classical marginalist economics and the development of psychology as a separate discipline.

Daniel Read's "Experienced Utility from Jeremy Bentham to Daniel Kahneman" provides a detailed account of the attempt to measure utility directly over the centuries. Ulrich Witt also reviews the history of utility distinguishing between sensory utilitarianism that seeks to measure utility directly and the more axiomatic form that dominated in the 20th century.

Bruni, L., and Sugden, R. (2007) “The road not taken: How psychology was removed from economics, and how it might be brought back.” The Economic Journal 117 (516): 146–73

This article explores parallels between the debate prompted by Pareto's reformulation of choice theory at the beginning of the twentieth century and current controversies about the status of behavioural economics. Before Pareto's reformulation, neoclassical economics was based on theoretical and experimental psychology, as behavioural economics now is. Current ‘discovered preference’ defences of rational-choice theory echo arguments made by Pareto. Both treat economics as a separate science of rational choice, independent of psychology. Both confront two fundamental problems: to find a defensible definition of the domain of economics, and to justify the assumption that preferences are consistent and stable.

Jevons: The Theory of Political Economy. Containing the immortal paragraph below. 

"The reader will find, again, that there is never, in any single instance, an attempt made to compare the amount of feeling in one mind with that in another. I see no means by which such comparison can be accomplished. The susceptibility of one mind may, for what we know, be a thousand times greater than that of another. But, provided that the susceptibility was different in a like ratio in all directions, we should never be able to discover the difference. Every mind is thus inscrutable to every other mind, and no common denominator of feeling seems to be possible".

Mid to Late 20th Century Reunification Programmes 

There are obviously dozens of papers that can be included here and many of the main ones are discussed in the references above. Any account of economic psychology and behavioural economics in the 20th century needs to recognise that the separation of the two disciplines was never universally accepted. Several streams of thought including American institutionalism, several streams of UK and European organisational and management psychology, all pre-dated the dominant wave of US behavioural economics that led to at least two Nobel prizes. A lot has been written on these interactions and one purpose of my lecture will be to rethink a little bit how current streams of behavioural public policy are related to the type of economic psychology being promoted through the IAREP conference and similar psychological outlets. 

The Case of Time Preferences and Delayed Gratification 

George Ainslie "Specious reward: a behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control"

Walter Mischel: "Processes in Delay of Gratification". 

David Laibson: "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting"

Strange Intersections 

George Ainslie "Freud and Picoeconomics" 

Hofmann and Van Dillen "Desire: the new hotspot in self-control research". 

Derek Parfit: Reasons and Persons