The spread of Behavioral Economics in Policy Instruments: conclusions from a systematic review(data base)

This study consists in a systematic review which the article’s search was made on the following databases: Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO Host, ProQuest and Emerald. We found 40 papers therein the scope in which the selection criteria were also respected. The review consisted of a qualitative and a quantitative analysis. We took into consideration that Behavioral Economics has been gaining ground in the public policies analysis, mostly for bringing new alternativities of policy instruments and for considering the behavioral aspects. That said, this research aims to investigate how the behavioral economics is spreading in the studies of policies instruments. We concluded that most of the papers mention the nudge theory and the most common theme was environment. The studies were published within 2005 and 2019 and all but one was published after the release of Thaler and Sunstein’s book, showing the influence of this theory also in the academic area. We found a great number of authors, affiliated to different institutions, and number and variety of journals. This data can be interpreted as a significant dispersion of the scientific community dedicated to the subject. Our results show that it is possible to explore more widely the behavioral economics as the grounded theory to public policies. This theory is not summarized to nudge and few fields of study, ergo, even years after the ascension of this economic branch, it is still underestimated to public policy instruments. This paper can be used as a start point for those who wats to explore the behavioral economics applied to policy instruments. The results show some gaps where interested researchers could work on new and original studies.