Séverine Toussaert (University of Oxford) 25.9.2025

It is our pleasure that Séverine Toussaert (University of Oxford) will present on Thursday, September 25, 2025, at 12:45 in room RB436 about the topic “Time to untie Odysseus from the Mast? Evidence Review on Commitment Devices (with Taisuke Imai and Anna Popova)”.

Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.

It is also possible to participate online via MS Teams at this link. In case of any connection issues, please contact lubomir.cingl@vse.cz.

ABSTRACT: Commitment devices, tools that individuals may use to restrict their future choices in response to limited self-control, offer strong theoretical appeal as mechanisms for promoting behavior change. Despite this promise, empirical evidence on their demand and effectiveness remains mixed. This paper presents a comprehensive review and meta-analysis of the literature on commitment devices, identifying key demand- and supply-side factors that influence take-up rates. Our analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity in commitment demand across different contexts and designs, with take-up rates varying widely. To better understand this variation, we employ a Bayesian meta-analysis and survey social science researchers to benchmark our findings.

BIO: Séverine is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and convenor of the Behavioural Economics group at the Department of Economics. She uses a combination of theory and experiments to study topics at the intersection of economics and psychology, with applications to public health. One of her main research interests pertains to the study of self-control in different contexts such as food choice, smoking cessation, or work productivity. She is also very interested in research methodology and metascience topics and currently collaborates with an international team on the development of a metascience lab to better scientific practices in economics and beyond (https://labsquare.net/). Keen to communicate differently about science, she co-hosts a “behind-the-scenes” online seminar series and a behavioural science podcast.