Sheheryar Banuri: The decisive mind. Hodder and Stoughton, 2023. ISBN 9781529344097. 240 pp., GBP 22.00.

This self-help book provides a new framework for making decisions in work, private life, and beyond. Using real-world examples and his own research, the author shows in an easily accessible language how even small decisions often profoundly impact our lives. From big, life-altering choices to the everyday decisions that shape routines, the book covers a range of the latest research from decision sciences, cognitive psychology, and behavioural economics.

Audrey G. Bennett and Jennifer A. Vokoun: Critical mapping for sustainable food design: Food security, equity, and justice. Routledge, 2023. ISBN 9781032118888. 264 pp., GBP 31.99.

This book introduces the critical mapping approach for analysing systemic societal problems like food. This new approach scopes out existing solutions and finds opportunities for sustainable design interventions. The current role of design and using particular design tools in attaining food security sustainably, equitably, and justly is often underrated. This book highlights 73 design outcomes, including local and regional ones designed by citizens. The authors showcase what is possible in sustainable food design by drawing on various case studies from across the world, from urban rooftop farms and community cookers to mobile apps and food design cards.

Magnus Boström: The social life of unsustainable mass consumption. Lexington Books, 2023. ISBN 9781666902440. 246 pp., GBP 77.00.

The message of this book is that we need to understand better why the patterns and drivers of unsustainable mass consumption are reproduced despite growing awareness of mounting ecological and social crises. It primarily targets the rich part of the world and focuses on consumption. The author claims that achieving a sustainable society means radically transforming current society and questioning consumerism. The book draws on various theories and research, mostly from sociology. It addresses the role of identities, social relations, interactions, belonging, social norms, and status comparison, as well as how perceived time scarcity is both a cause and an effect of consumption.

Martin Caraher, Sinéad Furey and Rebecca Wells: Food policy in the United Kingdom: An introduction. Routledge, 2023. ISBN 9781032196770. 266 pp., GBP 34.99.

This book examines food policy in the UK, its development, implementation, influences, and current issues. It starts by situating UK food policy within broader global debates and establishing key drivers, such as global citizenship, trade, and finance issues. The following twelve chapters cover food policy and nutrition, the growth of food insecurity, sustainable diets, food media, marketing and advertising, the UK food industry, the financialization of food, public sector food initiatives, food scares, and food safety. It closes with examples of success in UK food policy, including school meal programmes, the UK obesity strategy, and soda tax and salt reduction policies.

Marian Garcia Martinez: Consumers and food: Understanding and shaping consumer behaviour. Burleigh Dodds, 2023. ISBN 9781801463546. 332 pp., GBP 150.00.

This reader compiles ten chapters covering the vast “consumers and food” field. The volume reviews what we know about changing food purchasing behaviours amongst consumers so that farmers, food manufacturers, retailers, and policymakers can better meet and engage with the former. The chapters are split into two parts, with part 1 focusing on understanding consumer attitudes and patterns of behaviour. The papers in part 2 address product attributes that can affect consumers’ perceptions and attitudes, such as labels, health claims, and locally sourced and organic food products.

Aldona Glińska-Neweś and Pauliina Ulkuniemi: The human dimension of the circular economy: Reframing the mindset at macro, organizational and individual levels. Edward Elgar, 2024. ISBN 9781035314218. 432 pp., GBP 140.00.

This edited volume focuses on the human dimension of the circular economy (CE). It aims to reframe the mindset at macro, organisational, and individual levels to consider the human factor more. The 21 chapters are organised along the levels of change for circular economy models, offering practical solutions. The book includes studies on ethics for circular economy, policy and regulator instruments for CE, case studies in the copper mining industry, the role of eco-labelling, changing organisational culture for CE, employee green behaviour, and others. The final chapter presents a model of CE mindset development.

Nana Grigoryants: The effects of mere measurement on customer satisfaction and recommendation intention: A longitudinal analysis in the context of transactional surveys. Dr. Kovač, 2023. ISBN 9783339137180. 304 pp., EUR 98.80.

The mere-measurement effect is a phenomenon known in behavioural psychology. It assumes that merely measuring an individual’s intentions changes the subsequent behaviour. This effect is also applied to consumer behaviour, implying that asking behavioural intention questions can impact the following actions—this can be intended or unintended. This dissertation studies this phenomenon in survey studies, drawing on evolutionary psychology theories, classical conditioning, neo-behaviourism, the mere exposure effect, and more.

Colin Koopman: How we became our data: A genealogy of the informational person. The University of Chicago Press, 2019. ISBN 9780226626581. 280 pp., GBP 86.83.

This book proposes that we must consider and face the consequences of our enrolment in a thousand databases and data points. In the words of the author, “We are our data.” How did we get there? What from our past exists as data points? The author takes a historical perspective and argues that information personhood started long before the Internet, in the mid-1910s, with the introduction of certificates and state statistics. He calls for solid information politics.

Philipp Lepenies: Verbot und Verzicht. Politik aus dem Geiste des Unterlassens (Prohibition and abstinence: Politics from the spirit of letting go). Suhrkamp, 2022. ISBN 9783518127872. 266 pp., EUR 18.00.

This sociological and philosophical essay is about why and how prohibition and abstinence in consumption policy are so hard to introduce in societies, even though most of our environmental crises demand reduction and bans. Too quickly, sufficiency measures are perceived as overly paternalistic and pathways to an eco-dictatorship, ultimately unacceptable for a freedom-loving citizen. The author aims to understand the deeper mechanisms for this short-sighted reflexive overreaction and finds its roots in neoliberalism and a misunderstood concept of freedom. In unravelling these roots, the book sheds light on the deeper mechanisms. By understanding the clash between environmental urgency and cherished freedoms, we inch closer to sustainable solutions.

Johannes Marcel Offergeld: Behavioral marketing and the future of consumer protection under unfair competition law using the example of leading technology companies. Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2024. ISBN 9783339139207. 332 pp., EUR 99.80.

This book covers “Behavioural Marketing and the Future of the Consumer Model in Fairness Law,” using the example of leading technology conglomerates. Based on research in behavioural marketing, neuroscience, and consumer law, the author concludes that a new consumer model is needed—an empirically valid model that considers emotional and irrational decisions. Such an approach is particularly relevant in digital markets where manipulative dark patterns and massive information asymmetries are the norm. Consumer sovereignty must be newly defined in a generative AI and digital fraud world. The author calls for a “model of the digital consumer” in legal analysis.

Klaus Mathis and Avishalom Tor: Law and economics of justice: Efficiency, reciprocity, meritocracy. Springer Cham, 2024. ISBN 9783031568213. 316 pp., GBP 159.99.

This edited volume is a collection of 16 papers on “Law and Economics of Justice,” a new volume in the Series “Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship,” edited by the same editors. The book is organised into four parts: The first covers chapters on markets, market failure, and distributive justice on (and without) markets, and the second compiles papers on efficiency and law, e.g., efficiency and international human rights law. The third group of chapters focuses on reciprocity (e.g., consumer sovereignty and reciprocity), and the final part dives deep into meritocracy and justice.

Branko Milanovic: Visions of inequality: From the French Revolution to the end of the Cold War. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2023. ISBN 9780674264144. 368 pp., GBP 27.95.

This book takes us on a journey through the history of thought on “inequality.” It starts with Quesnay and the physiocrats, for whom social classes were prescribed by law. It continues through the classic nineteenth-century treatises of Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, who saw class as a purely economic category driven through production. It shows how Pareto reconceived class as a matter of elites versus the rest of the population, while Kuznets saw inequality arising from the urban-rural divide. It also explains why inequality studies were eclipsed during the Cold War before their resurgence as a central preoccupation in economics today.

Pere Mir-Artigues: Decisions, preferences, and heuristics: An introduction to economic psychology and behavioural economics. Edward Elgar, 2023. ISBN 9781035315260. 292 pp., GBP 100.00.

This book is an introduction to economic psychology, a discipline primarily concerned with understanding decisions, preferences, and heuristics. In seven chapters, it lays out how economic decisions are made by answering critical questions in the bordering field between economics and psychology. Close to the ecological rationality research programme, it presents the main factors that determine economic choices before exploring the most common algorithms used to concretise economic decisions and the main strategies for altering preferences. Chapters focus on the general issues surrounding economic decisions, such as preferences, beliefs, emotions, and restrictions, and on the heuristic algorithms, including outstanding social ones, applied by people in decision-making processes.

Erin B. Rasmussen, Casey J. Clay, W. David Pierce and Carl D. Cheney: Behavior analysis and learning: A biobehavioral approach (7th ed.). Routledge, 2023. ISBN 9781032065144. 690 pp., GBP 42.99.

This book provides an advanced introduction to the principles of behaviour analysis and learned behaviours, covering a full range of principles from the basic respondent and operant conditioning through applied behaviour analysis into cultural design. The text uses Darwinian, neurophysiological, and biological theories and research to inform B. F. Skinner’s philosophy of radical behaviourism. By combining ideas from behaviour analysis, neuroscience, epigenetics, and culture under a selection framework, the text facilitates understanding behaviour at environmental, genetic, neurophysiological, and sociocultural levels.

Akshat Rathi: Climate capitalism. John Murray Press, 2023. ISBN 9781529329926. 272 pp., GBP 16.65.

The book by award-winning journalist Akshat Rathi is a journey across five continents, where he portrays unlikely heroes driving the fight against climate change. His key argument is that a greener capitalism is necessary and profitable.

Rute Saraiva and Paulo Alves Pardal: Sustainable finances and the law: Between public and private solutions. Springer Link, 2024. ISBN 9783031494598. 382 pp., GBP 139.99.

Sustainable finance is closely interlinked with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and often lays the groundwork for transition. Policymakers and investors increasingly recognise the environmental implications for the financial sector through physical and transitional risks. Governments and European and international institutions regulate and supervise financial markets, and they also use their budgetary and tax policies (e.g., carbon tax) and their role as economic actors (e.g., green bonds and development banks) to tackle sustainability challenges. The book explains how private and public financial systems can be modified to create better societal value through sustainable approaches and initiatives such as integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in investment, procurement, and budgeting.

Minouche Shafik: What we owe each other: A new social contract. Penguin Vintage, 2022. ISBN 9781529112795. 256 pp., GBP 9.50.

What does society owe each of us? And what do we owe in return? Our answer to these inescapable questions—the social contract—shapes our politics, economic systems, and every stage of life. Economist Minouche Shafik examines societies worldwide and demonstrates that the urgent challenges of technology, demography, and climate require a significant shift in priorities. She develops a new social contract fit for the twenty-first century.

Dilip Soman: What works, what doesn’t (and when): Case studies in applied behavioral science. University of Toronto Press, 2024. ISBN 9781487548735. 392 pp., GBP 37.45.

This reader presents a collection of empirical studies in applied behavioural science research. Using 17 case studies worldwide, the authors share how these interventions unfolded, their challenges and drivers, successes and failures. Each chapter is an instance of practitioners testing interventions that had been successfully tested in the laboratory or a pilot. The topics range from educational initiatives to increasing tax compliance and reducing student absenteeism at scale. A major lesson from these cases is the importance of providing real-world evidence to inform policy and management practice. The editor closes with a summary of the learnings in the form of “Ten principles for translation and Scaling.”

Emily St.Denny and Philippe Zittoun: Handbook of teaching public policy. Edward Elgar, 2024. ISBN 9781800378100. 564 pp., GBP 230.00.

The 32 chapters of this handbook are structured in six parts. The first five divisions compile contributions that tackle the following questions: How can we teach public policy? What can different pedagogical approaches offer? How can we teach different theories and methods? How is public policy taught all over the world? The final part proposes a general overview of the curricula for different continents and a chapter on internationalising public policy teaching.

Cass R. Sunstein: Advanced introduction to behavioral law and economics. Edward Elgar, 2023. ISBN 978103532 3142. 150 pp., GBP 85.00.

This advanced introduction to behavioural law and economics explores how humans depart from perfect rationality and what this means for law. As the author, one of the field’s founders, convincingly shows, law is an exceedingly important domain for understanding and using behavioural economics, shedding light on the topic’s interdisciplinary nature.

Cass R. Sunstein and Lucia A. Reisch (Eds.). Handbook on nudges and society. Edward Elgar, 2023. ISBN 9781035303021. 352 pp., GBP 160.00.

This Research Handbook offers a comprehensive examination of the growing field of nudging and its impact on society, the environment, and the economy. The editors provide readers with a detailed exploration of the theoretical and empirical work on nudging and an understanding of the field’s current and likely future developments. Divided into five thematic parts, the book covers everything from the foundations of nudging to its use in organisations. Expert authors examine the relationship between nudges and freedom, behavioural biases and noise, the fundamental role of default rules and social norms, and how nudging can enhance human welfare. Health, safety, poverty, employment, the environment (including climate change), economic growth, and civil rights are covered in separate chapters. In unravelling the complexities of nudging, this book equips readers with a deeper understanding of the current landscape of “nudging” and its potential future trajectories.