Colin R Kuehnhanss

European Commission | ec · EU Policy Lab - Competence Centre on Behavioural Insights

Exploiting a unique panel of student respondents surveyed both shortly before and after the March 2016 bombings in Brussels, this paper analyzes the effects of terrorism on social identities and preferences over security policy. Social identification—including individuals’ feelings of connection to social groups such as countries or regions—is ofte...

In semi-open list systems, parties present pre-selected pools of candidates to the electorate. Candidates’ assigned ranks on the lists heavily influence their election odds and may reflect party leaders’ preferences, notably a possible gender bias. To strengthen women's representation, parties’ choices are increasingly subject to legal quotas. Thes...

Behavioural insights are becoming increasingly popular with policy practitioners. Findings and methods originally provided by cognitive psychology and later behavioural economics have found use in the formulation of public policies. Their most popularised application has emerged under the auspices of libertarian paternalism in the form of ‘nudging’...

The (centralised) collection and dissemination of information is a common feature of policy-making, and many policy tools directly originate and benefit from governments' nodal position. It allows detection and information gathering unavailable elsewhere in the social network, and facilitates the spreading of messages to specific individuals, group...

Taxes and benefits create incentives for people to adopt or avoid certain behaviours. They create premiums for (socially) preferred states. A premium can be determined by either taxing unwanted behaviour or by subsidizing desired behaviour. The resulting economic incentive for changing one’s behaviour is nominally equivalent under both mechanisms....

Tax and benefit systems commonly assign premiums to (socially) preferable states. For instance, having a child usually warrants a (cost-reducing) premium compared to remaining childless. These premiums may equivalently be achieved as positive benefits for the preferable state, or as taxes for the non-preferred state. However, perceptions of fair tr...

Distinct policy options are typically characterised by a number of advantages (or ‘opportunities’) and disadvantages (or ‘threats’). The preference for one option over another depends on how individuals within an organisation perceive these opportunities and threats. In this article, we argue that individuals’ identification with an organisation’s...

Parliamentarians are often allowed to pursue other work in addition to their mandate. Using data on the 7th European Parliament (2009–14), we analyze the relationship between the outside earnings of its Members (MEPs) and their parliamentary activities. The supranational nature of the European Parliament thereby allows a novel analysis of ‘moonligh...

Political decision-making involves the presentation of policy options from opposing points of view and in different lights. We test whether economic policy decisions are subject to equivalency framing by presenting survey participants with binary risky-choice decisions in hypothetical policy scenarios. Potentially mediating influences of expertise...