We are all familiar with the biases that can lead policymakers and professionals astray. Doctors and lawyers may be overconfident; teachers may have preferences for or against students based on gender, race, and sexual orientation; and judges on judicial panels may be influenced by the ideological orientation of their colleagues. Overconfidence and social preferences can all … [Read more...] about Can a Behavioral Economics Course Help Overcome Biases and Improve Decision-Making?
Ana María Rojas
Ana María Rojas Méndez is a behavioral economist with the Mind, Behavior & Development Unit (eMBeD), at the World Bank’s Development Impact (DIME). Her work integrates behavioral sciences, development economics, and impact evaluations to tackle a wide range of public policy challenges regarding health, gender, migration, taxation, and transportation. Prior to eMBeD, she was a Senior Behavioral Fellow at the Inter-American Development Bank's Behavioral Economics Group, where she led the creation and dissemination of the first free online "Behavioral Economics Course for Better Public Policies" in Spanish and Portuguese, with more than 6,000 trained public servants since its launch in 2020. Ana Maria also worked at Innovations for Poverty Action developing and managing the migration portfolio of projects in Colombia. Ana Maria received a Master in Public Administration in 2018 from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She holds a Master and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.
Compiling Latin America and the Caribbean’s Largest Repository of Behavioral Interventions
How do you keep people from gathering with friends and family during a pandemic? How do you improve school attendance among preschoolers? How do you make sure taxpayers pay their fair share? These are some of the questions researchers seek to solve so countries can continue to grow and prosper. Many issues come down to human behavior and how the right policy tools can nudge … [Read more...] about Compiling Latin America and the Caribbean’s Largest Repository of Behavioral Interventions
Enlisting Behavioral Sciences to Combat Fare Dodging on Public Transport
From New York and Washington to London and Santiago, metro and other mass transportation systems have long been vulnerable to people who jump turnstiles, avoid ticket collectors, and engage in other kinds of fare evasion that can lead to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue losses each year and even accidental death. TransMilenio, the world's … [Read more...] about Enlisting Behavioral Sciences to Combat Fare Dodging on Public Transport
Communicating Better in the Covid-19 Era
Covid-19 is still spreading rapidly on a global level, with more than 11.4 million cases and 407,000 deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean alone as of early November. This is happening despite the imposition of strict mobility restrictions and other constraints, like mask wearing and school closings. Indeed, in Argentina, with some of the most rigorous restrictions as … [Read more...] about Communicating Better in the Covid-19 Era
Leveraging Behavioral Insights in the Aftermath of COVID-19
As the Covid-19 pandemic takes its toll in lives lost and economic hardship, governments in Latin America and the Caribbean have rushed to increase fiscal spending, even as revenues drop. But only some countries will be able to access markets and borrow without sacrificing sustainability in the aftermath of the pandemic. Most will have to identify efficiencies in both revenue … [Read more...] about Leveraging Behavioral Insights in the Aftermath of COVID-19