Projects in Cooperation with Government Ministries
Kayma is leading the Ministry of Finance’s National Behavioral Economics Initiative. In this context, we plan and conduct a series of behavioral studies, with the participation of thousands of Israelis. The results of these experiments provide decision-making tools for policy makers, as well as infrastructure for Israel's future strategy in these areas.
Reducing Traffic Jams
How can we help hundreds of thousands of Israelis drive differently?
Traffic congestion costs the Israeli economy a whopping annual NIS 40 billion. Traffic jams waste time and fuel, causing both mental stress as well as air and noise pollution. Kayma is working with the Ministry of Transport and Road Safety to develop a series of behavior-based solutions which target a reduction in Israel’s traffic congestions.
New Online Government
Can bureaucracy be turned into history?
All over the world, countries are optimizing interactions between the citizen and government officials, and use digital means to transform public services into accessible services. Kayma is collaborating with the E-Government Unit at the Government ICT Authority to develop a "One-Stop Government" - a system to provide each citizen with a personal digital area which will assemble the overall information and government services essential to him/her, and enable to quickly and conveniently perform actions which once demanded time, effort and dealing with bureaucracy.
Minimizing the Shadow Economy
How to minimize the use of cash?
Cash money is an acceptable and easy form of payment – especially popular for money launderers, criminal organizations and terror funding, when lacking the proper supervision. In Israel, the extent of the shadow economy is one of the highest in the West – about a fifth of the financial activity. This does not only harm the country's treasury, but also increases the tax burden for the law-abiding citizens, damages the ability of businesses to compete with those "working in the shadows", intensifies the feeling of injustice and effects the social cohesion and the values of the rule of law. As part of a series of experiments, we are testing the effect of using behavioral tools such as: a foot in the door, personal appeal, default, social norm and more, regarding the responsiveness to pay taxes and on minimizing the use of cash.
Health
How to shorten the waiting periods for medical care?
One of the reasons for the long waiting periods for medical care is a phenomenon which was dubbed "No Show": in nearly a quarter of the appointments in Israel, the patient fails to show up at all, without cancelling the appointment in advance. In this way, the appointment is not transferred to another patient, the waiting periods are longer, and everyone suffers from a slower healthcare system. Minimizing the no-show for appointments phenomenon will drastically improve healthcare services. Kayma headed a project that examined the influence of different interventions on the no-show phenomenon among more than 160 thousand patients. The complete experiment results will be published soon.
Education
How do you help pupils choose a career in an informed way?
In different sectors of the labor market there is a discrepancy between demand and supply. An inter-office team, headed by the Head of the National Economic Council discovered that the primary deficiencies exist within the Hi-Tech industry, which acts as the main growth engine of the Israeli economy, in the fields of computer science and computer engineering, electronics, research, and development. Kayma is developing a series of behavioral solutions that will assist the individual in making a more informed decision career-wise, will act to decrease the dropout rates from the academy, and create a better match between demand and supply in the market, while minimizing the gender gaps found in those professions today.
Motivation
How do you improve employee motivation within the public sector?
In the public sector, the issue of management is especially important due to its effect on the society as a whole. The current structure of the incentive systems and work methodologies is far from optimal today, and the motivation of managers to manage, is wearing down. The concept of motivation – in the sense of undertaking to complete a mission – encompasses great complexity. Financial reward is an important factor, but motivation includes additional factors such as ambitiousness, happiness, a sense of meaning and more. These days, Kayma is examining which behavioral tools can assist in improving the quality of management within the public sector and in dealing with the organizational barriers which effect the motivation of managers.
Employment
How to facilitate special sectors to integrate within the employment market?
Beyond the economic implications, manifested in transfer and payment of pensions, low employment rates also have far-fetched social ramifications, and excluding special sectors from the employment market adds to their segregation and exclusion from society. These sectors are characterized by diverse barriers, both structural and social. Kayma is performing a behavioral research to examine the attractiveness of employment opportunities for the target audience, which are adapted to remove the barriers and their effect on employers and people from those sectors, in the process of finding employment.
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