Choice Architects and Behavioral Economics: Creating a Common Framework to Enhance Research and Collaboration

The purpose of this essay is to help generate a framework to promote and refine further investigations and projects in the field of behavioral economics (BE). It leads to being useful for delimiting the phases of any investigation and defines the conditions and elements to be considered in a genuine behavioral study. It has been elaborated by reviewing the work of behavioral insight units (nudge units) of countries and international organizations during the last decade, as well as previous papers in the discipline, to offer a summary of the main steps in BE studies: a manageable shortlist of cognitive bias, feasible examples of application, a guide to know when to nudge, and a reminder of what nudge is not; in short, a process to nudge extracted from the practice of the specialists who applied the approach in the last decade. Particularly, it can result in useful steps for those researchers willing to apply the behavioral approach to their ongoing studies and projects, besides students who require familiarizing with the method.