News outlets discuss the World Bank’s annual World Development Report, which was released on Thursday.

Inter Press Service: World Bank Calls for Development Policy “Redesign” around Human Behavior
“The World Bank has taken an unusual but highly visible step away from traditional economics, encouraging policymakers and development implementers to place far more emphasis on research into local human behavior when drawing up plans and projects. Such a focus would strengthen understanding on the ways in which habits, biases, and collective impulses impact on interventions in, say, health, education, or encouraging personal savings…” (Biron, 12/4).

MarketWatch: Behavior research key to solving development issues, World Bank chief says
“Using human behavior research is key to solving development challenges, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Thursday in reviewing a new World Bank development policy for 2015. Kim said his recent trip to West Africa served as yet another reminder that changing behavioral patterns was the most effective way to combat Ebola…” (Kim, 12/4).

World Bank: World Development Report 2015 explores “Mind, Society, and Behavior”
“…The newly launched report argues that development policies based on new insights into how people actually think and make decisions will help governments and civil society more readily tackle such challenges as increasing productivity, breaking the cycle of poverty from one generation to the next, and acting on climate change…” (12/2).