Life in a modern economy requires all of us to make very many decisions, often with important economic consequences. At its most simple, this means deciding what to purchase as consumers, but our decisions are also crucial for our financial security, health, careers and lifestyles. Research in behavioural economics increasingly sheds light on how we make these decisions and how our decision-making is influenced by the contexts in which we must decide.

Over the past five years, behavioural economics has become an important area of expansion at the ESRI. The Institute has undertaken multiple laboratory and field experiments to investigate how people make relevant decisions across a range of policy areas. Much of this work has been done in PRICE Lab, which is a consumer decision-making laboratory.