«The federal government found a
clever way to make a little extra money last summer.
Some vendors who provide federal
agencies with goods and services as varied as paper clips and
translators were given a slightly different version of the form used
to report rebates they owe the government.
The only difference: The signature
box was at the beginning of the form rather than the end. The result:
a rash of honesty. Companies using the new form acknowledged they
owed an extra $1.59 million in rebates during the three-month
experiment, apparently because promising to be truthful at the outset
actually caused them to answer more truthfully.
The altered form is among the early
successes of a year-old effort by the Obama administration to apply
academic research on human behavior to the business of running a
government. The idea is that a little science might help the
government collect taxes, distribute benefit payments and even help
people find jobs, get an education or save for retirement. (...)»
BinyaminAppelbaum, «Behaviorists Show the U.S. How to Improve GovernmentOperations», NYT, Sept 29, 2015
BA @ Twitter
