Experiential Behavioral Economics Courses

Abstract

This paper presents the development and implementation of experiential behavioral economics course in three Middle East universities. Experiential learning has proven to have many benefits for students because of putting them at the center of the learning process and allowing them to learn by doing. More specifically, as part of the practical sessions, students were tasked to design, implement and report on one field experiment conducted in collaboration with a nudge unit. We believe that this approach whereby students apply their knowledge through experimentation to address issues relevant to their communities and environment can be more effective and impactful than traditional teaching or relying only on classroom-based experiments. In this paper, we share the lessons learned from the journey of delivering several experiential behavioral economics courses.