- Priming is social psychology, not behavioral economics. Most behavioralists I know are openly scornful of priming studies, which as the author correctly notes often do not replicate. (Leading example of the kind of thing behavioralists think is BS: “prime people with words like ‘Florida’ or ‘retired’ and they will walk more slowly.”). That kind of study rarely if ever published in Econ journals.
- For his other claim that “Most behavioral interventions don’t replicate,” I would say that most behavioral economists don’t study or design interventions! Much of their work is experimental in nature and focuses on developing more realistic decision-theoretic mathematical models of choice which can be applied in economic modeling outside the lab.
What the author actually has in mind is not contemporary behavioral economics, but rather a subset of social psychology.
Those results used to receive reasonably wide media coverage and were taught to MBAs (generally not by the economists!), but starting around 2010 a bunch of very serious critiques of their statistical methods were raised which undermined confidence in the entire enterprise.