Varun Gauri

Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Lecturer, Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

bio:

Varun Gauri is Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, and Lecturer of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Previously, he was an economist in the World Bank’s research department, where he founded and headed the World Bank’s behavioral science unit, eMBeD. He was co-director of the World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior. He has served on the editorial boards of the journals Behavioral Public Policy, BMJ Global Health, and Health and Human Rights, as well as on the World Economic Forum Council on Behavior, the WHO Technical Advisory Group for Behavioral Science, the OECD Expert Group on Behavioural Insights, the Board of the Behavioral Economics Action Research Centre at the University of Toronto, and the American Political Science Association Task Force on Democratic Imperatives. His publications include the edited volumes Courting Social Justice: Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World and The Community Paralegal Movement and the Pursuit of Justice. His current research addresses behavioral economics, human rights, and social policy, and has been covered in The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Forbes, The Hindu, The Guardian, and Frontline. Email: vgauri1@gmail.com

Link: https://www.brookings.edu/experts/varun-gauri/

Blogs

• 3 Quarks Daily, monthly columnist

• Behavioral Public Policy Faces a Crisis April 30, 2020

• Measuring the Tricky Things October 19, 2019

• A BAD Conference October 4, 2018 

• The Origins of Social Boundaries Septmber 25, 2018 

• Populism and Development Policy December 8, 2017 

• eMBeDing Behavioral Insights in Development April 25, 2017

• The Story of the 2015 World Development Report December 5, 2014 

• MDGs that Nudge January 2, 2013 

• The Law’s Majestic Equality? April 2, 2012

• Anti-Poverty Lawsuits September 13, 2011

• The Millennium Development Goals and Beyond, Academics Stand Against Poverty, July 17, 2012 

• Can Development be Delivered Through the Courts? Some Evidence from India 19 April 2012 

• PIL Increasingly Favoring Advantaged Groups, Law and Other Things 

• Citizenship: the developing social and political life of youth, Development Outreach, 2007

Videos

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx_J72Dipf4

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ryItAAiU74

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h45rxV_g3lI

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMpUUL13HcY

• https://behaviouraleconomics.pmc.gov.au/behavioural-exchange-2018/journey-3-n3-nudging-nudgers

• https://www.cfr.org/event/policy-practice-addressing-poverty-behavioral-economics

• https://www.thersa.org/events/2015/05/mind-society-and-behaviour--redesigning-development-policy-and-development-assistance
  

3 questions:

• What aspects of this research agenda are you most excited about?

I believe that some of the biggest impact from behavioral economics research will involve improving organizational decision making, debiasing experts, and "nudging the nudgers."

• Of all the work you have done, what project / paper is your personal favourite and why?

We documented biases among biases among World Bank and UK civil servants, and proposed approaches for reducing the effects of bias in those organizations. https://academic.oup.com/wber/article/33/2/310/5530388?login=true

•  Which is the one paper or book that you wish you had written (but have not)?

  I would love to write a book on how to nudge people in rich countries to become more global and to support moral cosmopolitanism (the notion that all human lives should receive equal value in policy decisions).