The Problematic Welfare Standards of Behavioral Paternalism

Whitman, Douglas Glen; Rizzo, Mario J.

doi:10.1007/s13164-015-0244-5

Cited by 79 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Instead of applying a case-specific welfare analysis as for externalities, Thaler and Sunstein (2008) set the weight for System 1's interests to zero throughout. The conflict between the two selves in forming preferences is not solved but replaced by an assumption, which, in perfect circularity, requires System 2 to be (at least close to) the Homo oeconomicus: Only those preferences should be taken into account that System 2 reaches after being removed from stimuli, having ample time to deliberate and being able to rationally analyse the options (Infante et al, 2016;Rebonato, 2012;Schnellenbach & Schubert, 2015;Whitman & Rizzo, 2015). 15 The use of the two-system process of reasoning in this context is problematic for multiple reasons.…”

Section: Conceptual Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The challenges of behavioural insights for effective policy design

Kuehnhanss

2018

Policy and Society

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Behavioural insights are becoming increasingly popular with policy practitioners. Findings and methods originally provided by cognitive psychology and later behavioural economics have found use in the formulation of public policies. Their most popularised application has emerged under the auspices of libertarian paternalism in the form of 'nudging'. Its proponents claim to provide a new instrument to facilitate the formulation of effective and evidence-based policy, taking people's actual behaviour into account from the outset, while preserving their liberty to choose. This article reviews the origins of libertarian paternalism and the behavioural insights it builds on and takes a critical look at the foundations nudging relies on as a policy tool. It also discusses the ongoing efforts to build policy capacity to integrate behavioural insights and experimental methods in the creation of public policy. Behavioural insights offer a powerful tool to reshape and design new evidence-based policy. However, designers ought to be aware of the underlying assumptions on individual behaviour, the broadness of the mandate the nudging approach claims and the challenges they pose for design effectiveness.

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Section: Conceptual Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The challenges of behavioural insights for effective policy design

Kuehnhanss

2018

Policy and Society

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“…For example, some critics worry that systematic government nudging might fail to reliably pick out the right or best option, might be exploited for perfectionist or even illicit ends, and lead us onto a slippery slope towards 14 Such nudges might be both devised and implemented at a lower political level or a particular organization. overbearing paternalism (Grüne-Yanoff 2012; Rebonato 2014; Rizzo and Whitman 2008;Whitman 2010;Whitman and Rizzo 2015). In the latter case, localized democratic control would be additional to the control already exercised at the central level.…”

Section: Democratic Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Power to Nudge

Schmidt

2017

Am Polit Sci Rev

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N udging policies rely on behavioral science to improve people's decisions through small changes in the environments within which people make choices. This article first seeks to rebut a prominent objection to this approach: furnishing governments with the power to nudge leads to relations of alien control, that is, relations in which some people can impose their will on others-a concern which resonates with republican, Kantian, and Rousseauvian theories of freedom and relational theories of autonomy. I respond that alien control can be avoided, if nudging is suitably transparent and democratically controlled. Moreover, such transparency and democratic control are institutionally feasible. Building on this response, I then provide a novel and surprising argument for more nudging: democratically controlled public policy nudging can often contain the power of private companies to nudge in uncontrolled and opaque ways. Therefore, reducing alien control often requires more rather than less nudging in public policy.

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“…The issue at hand is that soft paternalism interferes in a process that reaches into the individual's reflective preferences. Paternalist policies that are manipulative (and thus violate consumer sovereignty) will also interfere with reflective 16 On a general debate concerning the instability of preferences in the context of paternalist policies, see also Whitman and Rizzo (2015). A thorough discussion of preference learning is beyond the scope of this paper, but see e.g.…”

Section: V2 Reflective Preferences Are Tentative and Temporarymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Constitutional Economics Perspective on Soft Paternalism

Schnellenbach

2015

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract. Using a framework that distinguishes short-term consumer preferences, individual reflective preferences and political preferences, we discuss from a constitutional economics perspective whether individuals find it in their common constitutional interest to endow representatives and bureaucrats with the competence to impose soft paternalist policies. The focus is specifically on soft paternalist policies, because these often work with non-transparent "nudges" that are considered as manipulative in some contributions to the literature. We show that those soft paternalist policies that are manipulative indeed collide with three criteria of consumer sovereignty, reflective sovereignty and citizen sovereignty that can be argued to represent common constitutional interest of citizens. On the other hand, we argue that the set of paternalist policies that is deemed acceptable on the constitutional level is restricted to non-manipulative instruments, and their application as government policies is limited to cases with stable and very homogenous preferences. However, we also argue that competitive markets are capable of supplying many mechanisms that allow individuals to cope with problems in their decision-making processes on a private level. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Classification: D11, D18, D63, D83, H11, Z18.

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The Problematic Welfare Standards of Behavioral Paternalism

Cited by 79 publications

References 34 publications

The challenges of behavioural insights for effective policy design

The challenges of behavioural insights for effective policy design

The Power to Nudge

A Constitutional Economics Perspective on Soft Paternalism

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