Governing people as they are and not as they should be

For lack of understanding the behavior of the populations concerned, public policies very often fail. Thus it is deplored that 36% of those entitled to the RSA, the active solidarity income, do not benefit from it, through ignorance or inability to find their way in the administrative maze. In Israel, the director of a crèche decides to charge a fine of 2.60 euros for parents coming to pick up their child 10 minutes or more late; a month later the number of delays has doubled, parents feeling relieved since they have paid. As for the "cobra effect", it designates the failure of the Indian authorities in Delhi who, to fight against the proliferation of snakes, granted a bounty for each cobra killed; the shrewd Delhites had then embarked on the clandestine breeding of cobras to obtain the bounty.

These examples serve as an introduction to the book by Coralie Chevallier, researcher in cognitive and behavioral sciences, and Mathieu Perona, economist…

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