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Nudging the Nudge Unit

The British government's Nudge Unit, which uses insights from behavioural psychology and economics (see Nudge website for further details) to improve public policy, has been partially privatised (story here). Employees now own one third, the government owns one third, and Nesta, a charity set up to stimulate innovation, owns the other third. It seems that demand for the Nudge Unit's services from foreign governments and non-government institutions has been one of the reasons for this move. Another reason could be that this new ownership structure is applying some of the insights of behavioural economics in terms of incentivising employees of the unit. The Nudge Unit has been nudged!

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