Building Better Governments With Behavioral Science: Margarita Gómez
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We have done [an] experiment in honest behavior. We also have done some experiments about increasing women’s participation in rural areas with good results. We have also done some studies about increasing female high school students’ interest in STEM careers. What I see is there are a lot of efforts in developing countries in Latin America and Africa. We can add the behavioral lens and the behavioral perspective to make the projects and the policies that are already implemented better. And we can work on different topics. I see behavioral science as a complementary intervention of the policies that governments are already implementing.
Listen to this episode
Intro
In today’s episode of The Decision Corner, we are joined by Margarita Gomez, the inaugural executive director of the People in Government Lab, located in the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. The People Lab is the School’s innovation-in-government project aiming to improve the motivation, responsiveness, and effectiveness of people working in government.
For reference, this episode was taped prior to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and accordingly reflects the understanding of the situation at the time.
Margarita has more than 12 years of experience working to build better governments and to design more effective public policies. Throughout her career, she has blended practice and theory, in both academia and the public sector. Previous to her current appointment, Margarita founded and led the first Behavioural Unit in Mexico and served as principal advisor to the Minister of Public Safety and Ministry of Defence in Mexico.
In 2016, Margarita founded the first policy lab focused on applying behavioural sciences and experimental methods in Mexico at the National Public Policy Lab in the Centre for Research and Teaching in Economics. Three years on, the lab is recognized as a flagship centre for behavioural and evidence-based public policy design across Latin America. As head of the Innovation, Behavioural and Experimentation Unit, Margarita built and led a multidisciplinary team of researchers, academics and practitioners and established the formation of partnerships with federal and local government agencies, international organisations and world-class universities and academics. She also led several evidence-based research projects using behavioural sciences to tackle problems in federal and local governments including corruption, gender discrimination and public-service motivation. Margarita has also taught university courses and given professional seminars and workshops on behavioural economics, design thinking, problem solving and behavioural ethics in Colombia, Chile, the United States and Mexico.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The motives and aspirations of Oxford University’s People in Government Lab, which Margarita currently leads.
- Margarita’s attempts to increase honesty and motivation among Mexican and Brazilian public servants.
- Risk aversion in policy development and public sector consulting.
- Strategies for enhancing the internal capacity for behavioral science in governmental institutions.
- The role of “champions”, aka powerful decision-makers who are sympathetic to, and knowledgeable about, the influence of behavioral science on their area of expertise, in implementing desired interventions.
- Arbitrating differences between academic and government metrics for a project’s success.
- Discussing the challenges of autonomy and expertise for policymaking in developing countries
