TY  - GEN
AU  - Márquez, Karina
AU  - Scartascini, Carlos
TI  - Can a Short Course on Behavioral Economics Improve How Public Servants Make Decisions?
PY  - 1970
Y1  - 2026/10/26
DO  - 10.18235/0014548
AB  - Over the past few decades, behavioral economics has shown that people systematically deviate from the rational agent model, and the field has focused on correcting the biases underlying the decisions of citizens and consumers. However, policymakers fall into the same patterns when they design and implement policies, and their errors can spread on a much larger scale. Public servants are not immune to loss aversion, overconfidence, or reliance on heuristics, biases that can result in poorly designed policies despite good intentions. In 2020, the Bank launched its first Spanish-language course on behavioral economics, a free, self-paced program focused on public policy design. This study focuses on the 21st edition of the course, which ran for six weeks in October and November 2024 with more than 1,400 registrants. The course has four modules, each requiring three to six hours. The first two introduce the core concepts of behavioral economics and compare them with the traditional economic model, which assumes fully rational decision makers. The third presents applied cases in tax compliance and health; and in the fourth, participants design a behavioral intervention through an interactive game.
UR  - https://doi.org/10.18235/0014548
ER  -