Behavioural economics is almost certainly the most fun and influential field in economics today, setting out to explore human behaviour in all its scope and strangeness. Be it the cooperative behaviour amongst the Indonesian whale-hunters of Lamalera village or the reluctance of university students to avoid painful electrocution when presented with costless alternatives, behavioural economists seek to understand the forces that govern the decisions we make. In this field lie the keys to making this world a better and more compassionate place.

The 2008 financial crash

On 15 September 2008, the fourth largest investment bank in the United States filed for the largest bankruptcy in history. For many commentators, this marked the point at which the most severe financial crash the world had experienced since 1929 became unavoidable. In the years immediately following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, some 30 million people worldwide lost their jobs due to the crash, many being consigned to long-term joblessness; poverty and inequality rates in developed countries rose to levels unprecedented in recent history, with poverty rates rising above 15 per cent in both the United States and Europe; and rates of mental illness, suicide and abuse all increased markedly. The countries hardest hit lost a decade of economic growth, but the true human costs of the crash – the devastation experienced by countless individuals and families – will never be fully understood (Okter-Robe & Podpiera 2013).

The terrible economic events of 2008–13 have led to something of a revolution within the economics discipline, for many validating the dissatisfaction amongst economics students that had been growing throughout the preceding decade. Back in June 2000, a group of university students in Paris circulated a petition calling for an increase in the realism of their economics curriculum, which they believed was too narrow, abstract and detached from the real world. The following year, 27 PhD candidates at the University of Cambridge launched their own similar petition and other students gathered at Kansas City issued a letter calling on economics departments around the world to reform their courses. In March 2003, students at Harvard University joined the fray.