Escaping Paternalism
eBook - PDF

Escaping Paternalism

Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Escaping Paternalism

Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy

About this book

The burgeoning field of behavioral economics has produced a new set of justifications for paternalism. This book challenges behavioral paternalism on multiple levels, from the abstract and conceptual to the pragmatic and applied. Behavioral paternalism relies on a needlessly restrictive definition of rational behavior. It neglects nonstandard preferences, experimentation, and self-discovery. It relies on behavioral research that is often incomplete and unreliable. It demands a level of knowledge from policymakers that they cannot reasonably obtain. It assumes a political process largely immune to the effects of ignorance, irrationality, and the influence of special interests and moralists. Overall, behavioral paternalism underestimates the capacity of people to solve their own problems, while overestimating the ability of experts and policymakers to design beneficial interventions. The authors argue instead for a more inclusive theory of rationality in economic policymaking.

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Yes, you can access Escaping Paternalism by Mario J. Rizzo,Glen Whitman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Economics & Macroeconomics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title
  3. Series information
  4. Title page
  5. Copyright information
  6. Contents
  7. List of Figures
  8. List of Tables
  9. Preface
  10. 1 Introduction: Puppets and Puppet Masters
  11. 2 What Is Rationality?
  12. 3 Rationality for Puppets
  13. 4 Preference Biases
  14. 5 The Rationality of Beliefs
  15. 6 Deficient Foundations for Behavioral Policymaking
  16. 7 Knowledge Problems in Paternalist Policymaking
  17. 8 The Political Economy of Paternalist Policymaking
  18. 9 Slippery Slopes in Paternalist Policymaking
  19. 10 Common Threads, Escape Routes, and Paths Forward
  20. References
  21. Index