The role of attention and information for behavioral change

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the role of attention and information for behavioral change in a policy setting. All projects experimentally study information search and attention either directly or indirectly. The dissertation begins with offering a theoretical and experimental benchmark; it discusses the main facet of search and attention and the role of inattention in informed decision-making. The chapters are illustrations of inattention in policymaking that show the different aspects of inattention in the making, execution, and testing of different policies. In the first chapter, a theoretical framework is proposed and discussed. Thereafter it discusses the search and attention of civil servants in the policy exploration and development phase. Two applications of inattentive decision-makers are studied in the second part of the dissertation. One application tests a policy to help inattentive decision-makers in a consumer context, and the other examines the behavioral response to inattentive policy execution in the realm of taxation.