Interview Haris Khan

Haris is a Policy Analyst/Project Lead at the OECD’s Behavioural Science Unit where he works to provide governments with technical advice on behavioural public policy and helps foster an international community of behavioural experts in government. Previously, Haris served in various roles in central agencies Governments of Canada and internationally. At the Government of Canada’s Privy Council Office and Treasury Board Secretariat, he was part of setting up new behavioural science units and applying evidence-based decision making to a wide variety of topics both inside and outside of government. Haris holds a Master of Public Policy and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Economics, both from the University of Toronto.   

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How did you get into behavioural science?

My interest in behavioural science began long before I knew the field had a name. As a teenager I read Freakonomics, which fascinated me because it explored the how so many of the assumptions we might make about how people behave can be challenged by the situations we find ourselves in. Later, while studying economics at university, I took an elective in behavioural economics and realised there was an entire discipline dedicated to understanding how people actually make decisions, rather than assuming they behave as perfectly rational actors. That fundamentally changed how I thought about economics. During an internship with the Government of Ontario, I happened to work alongside Canada's first Behavioural Insights Team. I was so interested that I kept asking them for work until they eventually gave me some. From there I joined the Canadian federal government's newly established behavioural insights team and have remained in the field ever since, eventually leading me to the OECD.

What are you most proud of having achieved, and what are you still hoping to achieve?

One of the achievements I am most proud of is contributing to a decade-long effort to improve access to an education savings benefit for low-income families in Canada. Although behavioural interventions such as redesigned communications and simplified enrolment processes improved uptake, we as a behavioural science team consistently advocated for  a more structural solution of automatic enrolment. After years of evidence-building and collaboration across government, that policy has now been adopted and will go live in 2028, meaning many more eligible families will receive support without needing to navigate complex administrative processes. It is a reminder that meaningful policy change often requires persistence rather than quick wins.

Looking ahead, I would like to help more governments build their own behavioural science capability, particularly countries that are only beginning their behavioural science journey. I am also excited by the opportunity to apply behavioural science to new policy areas, such as competition policy and consumer protection, where behavioural insights can help governments address challenges that have traditionally been viewed through purely economic or legal lenses.

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What are the biggest challenges facing behavioural science?

One of the biggest challenges is demonstrating clear value at a time when governments face increasing financial pressure. Behavioural science teams must be able to show tangible outcomes, whether through improved services for citizens or increased efficiency within government itself.

A second challenge is the growing mismatch between the number of graduates entering behavioural science and the relatively limited number of dedicated behavioural science positions. While this creates challenges for individuals entering the profession, it may ultimately benefit the field if behavioural scientists become embedded across a broader range of organisations and disciplines rather than remaining concentrated within specialist teams. Ensuring behavioural science training equips graduates with transferable skills will therefore become increasingly important.

What skills does a good behavioural scientist need?

A good behavioural scientist first needs strong scientific foundations: the ability to identify the behavioural problem, design rigorous research, conduct experiments and interpret evidence. Those are the essential technical skills.

Equally important, however, is the ability to operate in ambiguity. Behavioural scientists rarely work in ideal research environments. Instead, they collaborate with policymakers and organisations that have competing priorities, operational constraints and political realities. Success often depends on adapting research designs to fit those contexts while maintaining sufficient rigour to produce meaningful evidence.

Flexibility, collaboration and pragmatism are therefore just as valuable as methodological expertise. Behavioural scientists who insist on perfect experimental conditions may produce excellent research, but those who can balance scientific rigour with real-world implementation are often the ones who achieve the greatest impact.

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How do you think behavioural science will develop over the next 10 years?

I expect behavioural science within government to become increasingly decentralised and embedded within individual departments rather than concentrated in small central teams. As governments become more familiar with behavioural science, it will be viewed less as an innovative specialty and more as another capability that ministries routinely employ alongside economics, policy analysis and evaluation.

I also expect behavioural science to expand into policy areas that have historically received little attention, including the use of behavioural science on the thinking and functioning of public servants themselves. . Rather than repeatedly applying behavioural science to the same classic topics, governments will increasingly use behavioural thinking to address more complex and specialised policy challenges. Overall, I hope behavioural science becomes less defined by standalone teams and more by widespread adoption across government, where it becomes a normal part of policymaking rather than something viewed as novel or experimental.

What advice would you give to young behavioural scientists?

Entering behavioural science today is more competitive than it was a decade ago. Rather than focusing solely on becoming a behavioural scientist, I encourage people to think about the policy area they are passionate about—whether health, finance, education or another field—and enter through that route.

Behavioural science increasingly sits within specialist domains, so developing subject-matter expertise alongside behavioural methods can create more opportunities than pursuing behavioural science in isolation. Even if your job title is not "behavioural scientist," you can still apply behavioural principles and gradually build that expertise within your organisation.

Ultimately, I think behavioural science is moving towards being embedded across organisations rather than existing only within dedicated teams, so flexibility and domain knowledge will become increasingly valuable career assets.

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What is your biggest frustration with behavioural science?

One frustration is that behavioural scientists sometimes optimise for producing elegant research rather than solving the problems their partners actually care about. It is possible to produce a rigorous experiment with a strong causal result while delivering relatively little practical value to the organisation responsible for implementing policy. Behavioural scientists need to remain focused on creating outcomes that matter to decision-makers, not just to researchers.

A second frustration concerns how the field presents itself. Behavioural scientists often still describe ourselves  as a new or innovative discipline, despite decades of development, extensive evidence and even Nobel Prize-winning contributions. Rather than positioning behavioural science as something novel, I believe it should increasingly be viewed as one of many established tools that governments routinely use to improve policy and public services.

If you weren't a behavioural scientist, what would you be?

I would most likely have remained an economist. Before discovering behavioural economics, that was already the direction my career was heading, and I imagine I would have worked in a central bank or ministry of finance, focusing on microeconomic analysis and policy. Behavioural science required a conscious effort to pursue because it was still a relatively new field when I entered it. Had I simply followed the conventional academic pathway, I probably would have stayed within mainstream economics. Looking back, I was fortunate to join behavioural science during a period when governments were actively establishing new teams, allowing me to combine my interest in economics with the opportunity to help build an emerging discipline.

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How do you apply behavioural science in your personal life?

Behavioural science has become so integrated into my thinking that I often apply it without consciously realising it. I use commitment devices to help maintain healthy habits, such as exercising regularly and eating well, and I naturally think about incentives and framing when making decisions. Friends occasionally joke that I am "using behavioural science" on them during conversations, whether by framing choices differently or highlighting losses and gains to encourage action. While I would not describe these as formal interventions, understanding how people make decisions inevitably changes the way you approach your own behaviour and interactions with others. At this point, applying behavioural science has become second nature rather than something I deliberately switch on or off.

Which other behavioural scientists should I interview?

I would encourage you to speak with practitioners who are doing fantastic work in adapting global behavioural science frameworks and methodologies to their local context. For example, CINCO, Brazil's behavioural science team, which is housed in their Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services has done an incredible job adapting behavioural approaches to the Brazilian context and would have valuable insights into building behavioural science capacity within government. The team also supports a network of behavioural science practitioners in Brazil and could tell you a lot about how the field operates in Brazil and Latin America more generally. The whole team is fantastic, but Luis Henrique D’Andrea, who is the Program Coordinator for the team, would make for a great interview.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions Haris!

As I said before, this interview is part of a larger series which can also be found here on the blog. Make sure you don't miss any of those, nor any of the upcoming interviews!