NBER Roybal Center for Behavior Change in Health and Savings

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): NBER Roybal Center for Behavior Change in Health and Savings Two overarching questions guide the activities of the NBER Roybal Center: (1) What factors influence households' health and savings decisions? (2) Which interventions based on mechanisms in behavioral economics generate behavior change? We study these questions by applying and testing models in economics, psychology, and other behavioral sciences. We are particularly interested in identifying interventions that are cost-effective and scalable and that significantly change behavior. We use a wide range of methods, including field experiments, natural experiments, laboratory experiments, and applied theory. The NBER Roybal Center emphasizes individual decision-making, a focus that is particularly relevant in light of the growing role of individual choice in the health and savings domains. Today individuals themselves play a key decision-making role through institutions like defined contribution pension plans, IRAs, health insurance exchanges, and consumer-driven health care. Decisions about insurance plans, provider choice, diet, exercise, medication adherence, preventive care, retirement savings rates, asset allocation, and retirement wealth decumulation fall on the individual and not on employers or governments. The NBER Roybal Center seeks out opportunities for translating basic science results from research in the economics of health and aging into practical applications that improve health and economic well-being at older ages. We translate successful behavioral interventions developed in the domain of retirement savings to the domain of health and, vice versa. Finally, the NBER Roybal Center provides administrative resources that encourage collaborative engagement among a network of NBER researchers. The Center helps to support and fund the broader aging related activities at the NBER, including research on savings, health, disability, and other aspects of well-being at older ages in addition to conferences, a working paper series, a data warehouse with 21 datasets, and a website and newsletters for research dissemination.