Under the High Patronage of His Excellency The President of the Lebanese Republic
General Michel Aoun
BX Arabia 2019 features 10 panels tackling a wide range of subjects from the application of behavioral insights in the design and implementation of public policies related to financial inclusion, education, health, sustainability, and social cohesion, to the understanding of the mechanics of nudging, building behavioral capacities, and understanding future trends.
Check out the full program of BX Arabia 2019 and details of the panels below:
Full Program
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the full program of the summit:
Panel Details
Day 1 – Friday 12 April 2019
- Using Behavioral Insights for Greater Citizen Compliance with Rules and Regulations
Everyday, citizens around the world choose not buckle their seat-belts, fail to pay their taxes and drop litter on the ground, even when its contrary to what they rationally know is the “right” decision. While traditional efforts to increase compliance have been based on control and sanctions, evidence from behavioral science shows that even small nudges can have big impacts on non-compliant behavior. This session will explore the psychological biases behind this behavior and how nudges have can help citizens make better, more “responsible” choices, for improved policy outcomes and rule of law.
- Applications of Behavioral Insights for Healthy Lifestyle and Well-being: From Prevention to Screening and Adherence
- The so-called modern lifestyle we lead is having adverse effects on our health. In the Arab region, lifestyle-related or non-communicable diseases (NCDs) including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and mental illness such as depression and anxiety are causing more premature deaths and loss in quality of life than most infectious diseases. For far too long, NCDs have been approached with a curative mindset rather than a preventive one. This session aims to explore how behavioral insights and nudging can be used to promote preventative measures, such as the early detection of NCDs and the adoption of healthy lifestyle choices, in a cost effective way.
- How to Use Behavioral Insights for Better Academic Performance: Improving Engagement of Teachers, Parents, and Students
We are witnessing a global increase in efforts focusing on education both as an end in itself, but also a means to achieve change across policy areas, from inequality to health. While traditional solutions for improving education outcomes have focused on structural issues (e.g. increasing budgets), behavioral scientists have demonstrated large impacts on key educational outcomes by applying nudges that not only target students, but parents, teachers, and administrators. These interventions have revolutionized the way we approach issues such as school attendance, exam performance, social inequalities, by providing evidence about what does and does not work for improving education. This session will explore lessons learned from applications of behavioral science to education around the world, how they might be scaled, applied more systemically, and to more complex education issues in the future.
- Using Behavioral Insights to Foster Cohesion, Promote Diversity, and Prevent Violence
While the majority of behavioral interventions have been applied to commonplace policy-problems, we are starting to see nudges applied to bigger issues, previously thought outside the realm of behavioral science. These include issues such as refugee integration and social cohesion, gender-based violence, prevention of violent extremism and discrimination. Delegates at this session will hear about the behavioral biases at the roots of these complex issues, and the innovative ways that behavioral scientists have aimed to address them in different contexts.
- Behavioral Macroeconomics and Applications of Behavioral Insights by Central Banks and the Financial Markets for Inclusive Economic Growth
We are all now well-aware of how behavioral science has revolutionized the way we think about microeconomics, but its application to macroeconomics is lesser known. In his acceptance speech, Nobel Prize for Economics winner George Akerloff concluded that if there is any subject in economics that behavioral science should be applied to, it is macroeconomics, due to the powerful economic impacts of biases such as reciprocity, loss aversion, identity and procrastination. In other words, it is not only money, but human psychology that drives the economy.This session will seek to understand the influence of these behavioral biases on the economy and explore how behavioral interventions are already penetrating the banking sector, with positive impacts on financial regulation, dollarization, digitalization of the financial sector, increasing savings, among other outcomes.
Day 2 – Saturday 13 April 2019
- Bringing Behavioral Insights to the Top: Nudging Policymakers for Greater Accountability and Transparency
Countless nudges have now been trialled by governments around the world, but they have mainly focused on changing citizen behavior. But who nudges the nudgers? We know that everyone is susceptible to behavioral bias so it is only natural that we are starting to see behavioral economics applied to elected and unelected officials too. This session seeks to explore how behavioral biases might be impacting governments and parliaments and how they can be addressed using behavioral interventions.
- Organizational Behavior, Decision-Making, and Design Thinking
Human-centered design thinking, decision-sciences and organisational behavior have become popular topics across both private and public sector organisations.Increasingly, organisations and their leaders want to know: how can they make optimal decisions for maximum impact? How do behavioral biases lead to workplace challenges faced by individuals, organisations and teams? How can we apply behavioral insights to organisations, especially those who advise on the design of products, services and policies? In this session, delegates will hear about how using these approaches can lead to better outcomes for organisations, and the consumers or citizens they aim to benefit.
- Using Behavioral Insights for Greater Environmental Sustainability
Making environmentally sustainable decisions can be at best challenging given the complexities of everyday life. Many have good intentions to act in a sustainable manner but fail to do so, resulting in what is known as the “intention-action” gap. Moreover, achieving environmental sustainability requires a collective action on behalf of the government, local authorities, private sector entities and most importantly the consumer-citizen. This session seeks to explore how behavioral biases might be discouraging these groups from acting sustainably, and how these biases can be addressed using behavioral insights and nudging.
- Capacity Building in Behavioral Science and Experimentation: Teaching Students, Civil Servants, NGOs, and the Private Sector
The rise of nudge units over the past decade is a strong indicator of the influence the behavioral sciences have enjoyed in shaping programs and policies around the world. Yet, there is much and more that practitioners can learn from the behavioral sciences to inform their daily work. This panel session serves two objectives: 1) to explore ongoing initiatives in building the capacities of policymakers, civil servants, NGOs and students in designing, implementing and evaluating behaviorally informed policy interventions; and 2) to showcase the importance of learning from lab and field-based social experiments to design evidence-based policies and programs.
- Paving the Way for Behavioral Economics in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: New Trends and Ethical Concerns
The first behavioral science “revolution” has shown us the powerful impact of relatively simple and low-tech interventions on behavior (e.g. behaviorally informed letters on tax payments). The field is now starting to explore how to take nudging to scale, how to achieve bigger and more durable effects, as well as how to make use of new cutting edge tools. As we head into the fourth industrial revolution, powerful technologies, like machine learning, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, are providing new opportunities, both for the way we nudge and how we target those nudges. As we explore these new tools and trends, there is a continuous need to examine the ethics of nudging. This session will seek to explore what the second behavioral revolution will look like, and ensure there is an understanding of its ethical implications.