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What Is Really Behavioral in Behavioral Health Policy? And Does It Work?

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  • Matteo M. Galizzi

Abstract

Across health systems, there is increasing interest in applying behavioral economics insights to health policy challenges. Policy decision makers have recently discussed a range of diverse health policy interventions that are commonly brought together under a behavioral umbrella. These include randomized controlled trials, comparison portals, information labels, financial incentives, sin taxes, and nudges. A taxonomy is proposed to classify such behavioral interventions. In the context of risky health behavior, each cluster of policies is then scrutinized under two respects: (i) What are its genuinely behavioral insights? (ii) What evidence exists on its practical effectiveness? The discussion highlights the main challenges in drawing a clear mapping between how much each policy is behaviorally inspired and its effectiveness.

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  • Matteo M. Galizzi, 2014. "What Is Really Behavioral in Behavioral Health Policy? And Does It Work?," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 36(1), pages 25-60.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:apecpp:v:36:y:2014:i:1:p:25-60.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aepp/ppt036
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    Cited by:

    1. Jill E. Hobbs & Stavroula Malla & Eric K. Sogah & May T. Yeung, 2014. "Regulating Health Foods," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15768.
    2. Ferretti, Valentina & Montibeller, Gilberto & von Winterfeldt, Detlof, 2023. "Testing the effectiveness of debiasing techniques to reduce overprecision in the elicitation of subjective continuous probability distributions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115333, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Allais, Olivier & Bazoche, Pascale & Teyssier, Sabrina, 2017. "Getting more people on the stairs: The impact of point-of-decision prompts," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 18-27.
    4. Vasilios Kosteas, 2015. "Physical activity and time preference," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 361-386, December.
    5. Dolan, Paul & Galizzi, Matteo M. & Navarro-Martinez, Daniel, 2015. "Paying people to eat or not to eat? Carryover effects of monetary incentives on eating behaviour," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 153-158.
    6. Goldzahl, Léontine & Hollard, Guillaume & Jusot, Florence, 2018. "Increasing breast-cancer screening uptake: A randomized controlled experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 228-252.
    7. Stecher, Chad & Mukasa, Barbara & Linnemayr, Sebastian, 2021. "Uncovering a behavioral strategy for establishing new habits: Evidence from incentives for medication adherence in Uganda," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Paul Dolan & Matteo M. Galizzi, 2014. "Because I'm Worth It: A Lab-Field Experiment on the Spillover Effects of Incentives in Health," CEP Discussion Papers dp1286, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Ferretti, Valentina & Montibeller, Gilberto & von Winterfeldt, Detlof, 2023. "Testing the effectiveness of debiasing techniques to reduce overprecision in the elicitation of subjective continuous probability distributions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(2), pages 661-675.

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    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

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