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AbstractBehavioural insights are becoming increasingly popular with policy practitioners. Findings and methods originally provided by cognitive psychology and later behavioural economics have found use in the formulation of public policies. Their most popularised application has emerged under the auspices of libertarian paternalism in the form of 'nudging'. Its proponents claim to provide a new instrument to facilitate the formulation of effective and evidence-based policy, taking people's actual behaviour into account from the outset, while preserving their liberty to choose. This article reviews the origins of libertarian paternalism and the behavioural insights it builds on and takes a critical look at the foundations nudging relies on as a policy tool. It also discusses the ongoing efforts to build policy capacity to integrate behavioural insights and experimental methods in the creation of public policy. Behavioural insights offer a powerful tool to reshape and design new evidence-based policy. However, designers ought to be aware of the underlying assumptions on individual behaviour, the broadness of the mandate the nudging approach claims and the challenges they pose for design effectiveness.

AbstractParliamentarians are often allowed to pursue other work in addition to their mandate. Using data on the 7th European Parliament (2009–14), we analyze the relationship between the outside earnings of its Members (MEPs) and their parliamentary activities. The supranational nature of the European Parliament thereby allows a novel analysis of 'moonlighting' free of country‐specific bias. We find outside earnings to be negatively correlated with the particularly work‐intensive production of draft reports and opinions. Utilizing the considerable freedom of Member States in organizing elections, we find this relationship to be dependent on the electoral system under which MEPs are elected. While the effect of the trade‐off between outside and parliamentary work is predominantly negative in all other systems, outside earnings of MEPs from centralized but candidate‐focused systems correlate positively with their productivity, indicating a possible benefit from selection effects.

Distinct policy options are typically characterized by a number of advantages (or 'opportunities') and disadvantages (or 'threats'). The preference for one option over another depends on how individuals within an organization perceive these opportunities and threats. In this article, we argue that individuals' identification with an organization's core aims and objectives constitutes a key determinant of this perception. We propose that stronger identification shifts individuals' attention towards potential threats rather than opportunities in the payoff distribution, encouraging avoidance of negative outcomes. Moreover, we argue that this 'prevention focus' in individuals' motivational basis will be stronger under negative than under positive selection strategies. An original survey experiment with civil servants in the European Parliament finds significant evidence supporting the empirical implications of our argument.