This study offers an international review of the initial applications of behavioural economics to policy, with a particular focus on regulatory policy.

'The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Economics and Law' brings together leading scholars of law, psychology, and economics to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of this field of research, including its strengths and limitations as well as a forecast of its future development. Its twenty-nine chapters are organized into four parts.

Economic analysis of law: an overview -- Behavioral studies -- An overview of behavioral law and economics -- Normative implications -- Behavioral insights and basic features of the law -- Property law -- Contract law -- Consumer contracts -- Tort law -- Commercial law -- Administrative, constitutional, and international law -- Criminal law and enforcement -- Tax law and redistribution -- Litigants' behavior -- Judicial decision-making -- Evidence law

Offering a fresh perspective on "nudging", this book uses legal paternalism to explore how legal systems may promote good policies without ignoring personal autonomy. It suggests that the dilemma between inefficient opt-in rules and autonomy restricting opt-out schemes fails to realistically capture the span of options available to the policy maker. There is a third path, namely the ‘mandated-choice model’. The book is mainly dedicated to presenting this model and exploring its great potential. Contract law, consumer protection, products safety and regulatory problems such as organ donation or excessive borrowing are the setting for the discussion. Familiarising the reader with a hot debate on paternalism, behavioural economics and private law, this book takes a further step and links this behavioural law and economics discussion with philosophical considerations to shed a light on modern challenges, such as organ donation or consumers protection, by adopting an openly interdisciplinary approach. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of contract law, legal systems, behavioural law and economics, and consumer law.

This book explores current issues regarding the regulation of various economic sectors, theoretically and empirically, discussing both neoclassical and behavioural economics approaches to regulation. Regulation has become one of the main determinants of modern economies, and virtually every sector is subject to general laws and regulations as well as specific rules and standards. A traditional argument to justify regulatory interventions is the promotion of public interests. Fixing markets that lack competition, balancing information asymmetries, internalising externalities, mitigating systemic risks, and protecting consumers from irrational behaviour are frequently invoked to complement the invisible hand of the market with the visible hand of the state.However, regulations can lead to unintended consequences, and serve the interests of powerful private interest groups rather than the public interest and social welfare. In addition, new insights from behavioural economics question the traditional regulatory approaches, most prominently in attitudes towards consumers. Furthermore, digitalisation and technological innovation in general present new challenges in terms of both the type of regulation and the regulatory process.Part I of this book discusses various theoretical approaches to the economic analysis of regulations, while Part II looks at specific applications of the law and economics of regulation.

In recent years, the idea of "nudges" – small changes in individual choice architecture that do not involve incentives or coercion – has entered policy discourse and practice to address various problems ranging from energy usage to retirement savings. However, how nudges can be incorporated into regulatory practice, and whether the experimental methodologies used to design nudges are still appropriate when they are being used as a regulatory instrument is still an unexplored issue. As this book shows, the translation of ideas into the world of regulation is not so simple and straightforward. By analysing the different experimental alternatives that regulators can use when designing nudges and through a close analysis of a real-world example – the case of the European Union tobacco warnings – this book proposes an alternative design process more in tune with the reality of regulation. The book explores the implications of iterative experimental methodologies and processes for regulators, concluding with a call for an alternative nudging’s design process tailored to the regulatory space. This book is crucial for researchers and policy-makers interested in the incorporation of nudging into regulation and anyone interested in the implications of behavioural economics – and evidence more generally – for regulatory design.

Financial markets are complex. Regulators strive to predict ways in which they can malfunction and create rules to prevent this from happening, yet behavioural impacts are often overlooked. This book explores how behavioural finance can go hand-in-hand with traditional methods to help banks and regulators create better policies. It also demonstrates how the behavioural finance revolution has opened the way to a more integrated approach to the analysis of economic phenomena.