Research Group Concept

Economic Psychology and Behavioural Public Administration Group

Led by Professor Liam Delaney, the group brings together economic psychology and behavioural public administration to study how people experience complex administrative environments. The group investigates underlying mental states in administrative environments, using methods such as the day reconstruction method and experience sampling to capture experience as it unfolds. Applications span both public-sector settings, including return-to-employment systems, long-term care, and environmental behaviour, and private-sector ones such as retail investment and debt servicing, reflecting economic psychology's long tradition of engaging real world institutions and policy actors. Two dedicated initiatives bring the work to policy and industry. "Wider World" translates research into public policy through workshops, toolkits, and engagement with policy actors, while also examining, reflexively, how behavioural science ought to be applied. FORGOOD, an ethical behavioural science initiative, applies research from the group to industry. The group is staffed by affiliated researchers from within LSE and visiting colleagues from outside it, partners in policy and industry, and students at every level, from MSc dissertation students to undergraduate apprentices, to affiliated PhD students based primarily in the department.

Some illustrative papers: The papers below give some sense of the interplay of economic psychology, naturalistic methods, and ethical analysis, as well as application to administrative questions. 

Bachmann, R., Gleibs, I. H., & Delaney, L. (2026). Social identity and capital income: A social psychological approach to identity economics using UK household data. British Journal of Social Psychology, 65, e70025

Lades, L. K., Zawojska, E., Johnston, R. J., Hanley, N., Delaney, L., and Czajkowski, M. (2025). Anomalies or expected behaviors? Understanding stated preferences and welfare implications in light of contemporary behavioral economics. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 19(1), 48–68.

Lades, L. K., & Delaney, L. (2024). Self-control failures, as judged by themselves. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), Article 1351, 1–14.

Martin, L., Delaney, L., & Doyle, O. (2024). Everyday administrative burdens and inequality. Public Administration Review, 84(4), 660–673.

Laffan, K., Lades, L. K., & Delaney, L. (2023). Paths that lead astray: Examining the situational predictors of intention-behaviour gaps in meat consumption. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 89, Article 102045.

Arulsamy, K., & Delaney, L. (2022). The impact of automatic enrolment on the mental health gap in pension participation: Evidence from the UK. Journal of Health Economics, 86, Article 102673

Lades, L. K., & Delaney, L. (2022). Nudge FORGOOD. Behavioural Public Policy, 6(1), 75–94.