Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2016
Abstract
Behavioral economics attempts to integrate insights from psychology, neuroscience, and sociology in order to better predict individual outcomes and develop more effective policy. While the field has been successfully applied to many areas, education has, so far, received less attention – a surprising oversight, given the field's key interest in long-run decision-making and the propensity of youth to make poor long-run decisions. In this chapter, we review the emerging literature on the behavioral economics of education. We first develop a general framework for thinking about why youth and their parents might not always take full advantage of education opportunities. We then discuss how these behavioral barriers may be preventing some students from improving their long-run welfare. We evaluate the recent but rapidly growing efforts to develop policies that mitigate these barriers, many of which have been examined in experimental settings. Finally, we discuss future prospects for research in this emerging field.
Keywords
Law and economics, education policy, empirical legal studies
Publication Title
Handbook of the Economics of Education
Repository Citation
Lavecchia, Adam; Liu, Heidi H.; and Oreopoulos, Philip, "Behavioral Economics of Education: Progress and Possibilities" (2016). All Faculty Scholarship. 2516.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2516
Included in
Applied Behavior Analysis Commons, Education Law Commons, Education Policy Commons, Law and Economics Commons
Publication Citation
In HANDBOOK OF THE ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION, v.5 (Erik Hanushek, Stephen Machin & Ludger Woessmann eds., Elsevier 2016)