About this blog

Behavioural economics represents the largest leap forward in economic theory since the neoclassicists and their marginal revolution. Indeed, it goes a long way towards correcting their over reliance on the assumed logical motivations of consumers and suppliers. Behavioural economics has quite obviously gone past the ‘startup’ phase, and is now a generally accepted part of economics itself. But even though the purists seem happy enough to tolerate BE, it’s fair to say that they regard BE as a branch of economics, and one that must be kept separate from the main event.

I would say that the division between behavioural economics and 'regular' economics (I can't say classical!) is artificial and unhelpful. Studying economics in its pure form, assuming that all of its problems are physics or maths based, is like studying the properties of tyres without studying the properties of roads. It makes little sense and has limited practical application. As soon as tyres leave the factory, they spend their lives contact with the road. As soon as an economics theory leaves the lab, it spends it's life in contact with people and and their weird behaviours. There is no economy without people.

All economics is behavioural. For it to be otherwise, we'd have to have an economy with no humans, one that it is entirely mechanical. That's just not how things are, or ever will be.

About Mark Molloy (Editor)

After studying Economics at Trinity College Dublin, Mark worked as an analyst for American International Group, auditing companies in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. After a spell heading up the consultancy division of Dr. Robert Cialdini's UK consultancy Influence At Work, he started his own agency behavioural economics consultancy, Behavioural Works Ltd.

Since then Mark has heading up a team of behavioural economists mostly in the financial services sector on challenges like nudging customers to pay their mortgages on time and convincing them to use digital self serve options. Collectively, they’ve nudged millions of customers with thousands of text messages, emails, scripts letters and website nudges to create millions of euros and pounds of extra value.

Behavioural Works Ltd has created strategies and content for campaigns that included direct mail, websites, email, letters, brochures, call centre scripts and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) content. They've redesigned customer journeys and processes to cut out 'sludge' (the opposite of nudge) and increase customer engagement. Our most successful intervention unlocked €93m of value within 2 months.

You can find out more about Behavioural Works Ltd at www.behaviouralworks.com. Mark plays poor tennis for the Woldingham B team and has two teenage boys and no pets but there seems to be a few mice (could be squirrels) in the attic.

Mark is based in London, UK

About Carlos Sanchez (contributor)

Carlos leads teams that build financial products that kick ass. He's currently director of product at Ratepay, where his team are building payment solutions, like 'buy now pay later', for e-commerce businesses across Europe. Before this he held leadership roles at N26, Sum Up and Western Union, working on challenges like helping to build a bank from scratch and growing it to 5 million active users. An especially successful project was making point-of-sale payouts faster, which resulted in 150k extra users and over 80m extra transactions. Nice.

Carlos also has extensive regulatory experience and previously worked as a compliance officer. He uses this experience to help businesses in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific to acquire and manage payment and banking licenses.

You can find Carlos on Linked in here. https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-sanchez-webb-9a363a48/ or on the tennis court or at choir rehearsal. His nickname is 'Leemer' and nobody knows why. One day he will headline the at the Berlin State Opera. Belief is key.

Carlos is based in Berlin, Germany.

About Stephen Sullivan (contributor)

Stephen is tall, dark and handsome and witty and clever. After studying Economics at Manchester, he deftly side stepped a career in Hollywood to focus on his dreams: which is using economic theory to make customer experience less painful. Basically, using theory for the good of us all. After a spell in Banking with Santander Bank Plc, he pivoted into the strange world of customer contact strategies and process optimisation & enablement.

You'll frequently find him roaming the call centres of the United Kingdom and beyond, listening in on calls, charting out customer experience diagrams and generally trying to make the world a better place. He lives on the South Coast and does important charity work, about which he does not like to talk. He has a dog called Hugo that is the envy of the town plus four children that should also be mentioned.

Stephen is based in Bournemouth, UK