Behavioural economics in industry

I was delighted to find a hidden gem at the back of the Living section of Saturday's Toronto Star, a story about a behavioural economics book co-written by Hewlett-Packard behavioural economist Kay-Yut Chen (the article does not appear to be available online).

The article itself was not earth-shattering, but I was surprised to see that Hewlett-Packard employs a behavioural economist to conduct experiments that could help improve their business. The workplace is a logical place to run economics experiments, but because it's a fairly new field one doesn't hear about companies running their own experiments very often. Charities are one area that has seen the benefit of experimental economics, with several running experiments in recent years in an attempt to learn how to fundraise more efficiently. But for the most part, economics experiments still take place in academic labs (CIRANO in Quebec is probably Canada's most prominent) rather than in the workplace.

Industry seems like it's slowly starting to see the benefits it can reap from economic research. Google poached respected economist Hal Varian from Berkley in 2007 to help them take better advantage of all the data that Google searchers generate, but he's the only example of a prominent economist in a private-sector research position that I can think of. So I was pleased to see that Hewlett-Packard also has an economist. I'll have to pick up a copy of his book.