Paternalisms – The daily blog of behavioral and cognitive economics

Paternalism and Behavioral Economics

In the last fifty years or so, there has been an explosion of empirical work on how and when human beings depart from perfect rationality. This work has led, not surprisingly, to a rethinking of paternalism and its limits. vWe now have three camps, more or less: coercive paternalists, who urge that behavioral findings greatly strengthen arguments for mandates and bans (and leave John Stuart Mill in the dust, more or less); libertarian paternalists, who urge that behavioral findings point to a host of freedom-preserving interventions, such as warnings, reminders, and automatic enrollment; and antipaternalists, who urge that behavioral findings justify only, or at most, efforts to strengthen people’s capacities to make good choices. ….[READ]