Nudges and norms: On the political economy of soft paternalism

Schnellenbach, Jan

doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2011.12.001

“…Some people may prefer to eat unhealthy but tasty food over healthy food, or smoke willingly, even when taking into account the risks involved. Because of this hetereogeneity, the libertarian paternalist faces what Nagatsu (2015, this issue) calls the 'objection from coherence' (see also Bovens 2009;Heilmann 2014;Schnellenbach 2012): nudges may push some people towards a behaviour that is not in agreement with their own true preferences. Sunstein (2013) argue that this problem might be mitigated through personalized nudges-that is, nudges that would push agents in different directions, depending on their own preferences.…”

Section: The Restoration Of Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, even the agents who do have such capacities will experience some cognitive or deliberative costs to escape the influence of the nudges (Heilmann 2014): they suffer, so-to-speak, of a Bpsychic tax^ (Loewenstein and O'Donoghue 2006;Schnellenbach 2012). It seems, therefore, that in the best of all cases, libertarian paternalistic nudges will benefit some agents-hopefully a majority of them-but always at the expanse of a minority of them (Bovens 2009;Lecouteux 2015, this issue), if only because of deliberative costs.…”

Section: The Easy Avoidability Of Nudgesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Libertarian Paternalism to Nudging—and Beyond

Barton

¹

,

Grüne‐Yanoff

²

2015

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“…Glaeser (2006) argues with regard to libertarian paternalism that there is no reason to expect politicians or bureaucrats to be able or willing to nudge individuals into the direction of the homo economicus benchmark, even if they had all the information needed. In particular, paternalist planners themselves may suffer from their own availability bias, and focus on issues that are particularly popular at a given point in time (Schnellenbach 2012). …”

Section: Libertarian Paternalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral political economy: A survey

Schnellenbach

¹

,

Schubert

²

2015

European Journal of Political Economy

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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. Explaining individual behavior in politics should rely on the same motivational assumptions as explaining behavior in the market: That's what Political Economy, understood as the application of economics to the study of political processes, is all about. In its standard variant, those who played the game of politics should also be considered rational and selfinterested, unlike the benevolent despot of earlier models. History repeats itself with the rise of behavioral economics: Assuming cognitive biases to be present in the market, but not in politics, behavioral economists often call for government to intervene in a "benevolent" way. Recently, however, political economists have started to apply behavioral economics insights to the study of political processes, thereby re-establishing a unified methodology. This paper surveys the current state of the emerging field of "Behavioral Political Economy" and considers the scope for further research. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Code: D780, D030, A120, D720.

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“…Paradoxically, both green nudges -particularly the default -were also judged as 'intrusive to freedom of choice' by majorities in both countries! 53 See, e.g., Bovens (2009), Hausman andWelch (2010), Schnellenbach (2012Schnellenbach ( , 2016. The unclear epistemic foundations of nudging are nicely captured by Smith (2007: 155), stressing the infinite regress involved when possibly cognitively biased policymakers hire 'experts' who are themselves possibly cognitively biased, etc.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Green Nudges: Do They Work? Are They Ethical?

Schubert

¹

2016

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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. Real-world consumers, though, are motivated by more than incentives and information (Michalek et al. 2015). These are innovative policy tools that are designed with a specific focus on behavioral factors 1 Most economist readers can be assumed to be familiar with the key insights of Behavioral Economics; those interested in the details may be referred to the excellent surveys by Camerer and Loewenstein (2004) and Della Vigna (2009). Van den Bergh et al. (2000) give an outline of behavioral economics insights with a focus on their relevance for environmental economics prior to Nudge. The contributions by Norton et al. (1998) and Söderbaum (1994) are particularly interesting as precursors of the nudge agenda, as they argue that environmental policies should try to exploit endogenous preference change. 2 An important exception to that rule was Jack Knetsch, see, e.g. Knetsch and Sinden (1984), Knetsch (1989 and structured. To nudge someone is to deliberately intervene in a given CA. Nudges are widely regarded as potential complements to more traditional incentive-based regulation; the hope is that adding them to the policy mix may be both more effective and more popular among the general public than relying on traditional regulatory tools alone (Thaler and Sunstein 2008: ch. 12). 6 As Cass Sunstein (2014: 13) puts it, the general aim is to develop "sensible, low-cost policies with close reference to how human beings actually think and behave." There is an important caveat, though: Due to their unclear welfare foundations and the potentially paternalistic and manipulative way in which these tools shape human behavior (viz., by addressing and exploiting cognitive biases), nudges raise complex ethical questions. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor mayThe exact definition of nudges is a matter of some controversy. What's typically offered as a back-of-the-envelope definition -"interventions that influence people's behavior without significantly changing their monetary incentives or coercing them" -is unhelpful, as it also lets the mere provision of information count as a nudge. We rather suggest to follow Hansen (2016) by supplementing this shorthand with the notion, originally advanced by Thaler and Sunstein (2008: 8) To illustrate, the subsidy and tax schemes discussed by Allcott and Taubinsky (2015) in the context of energy efficiency policy qualify as BEP in our sense of the term. 5 See in particular (ibid.: ch. 12) on green nudging, and Sunstein (201...

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Nudges and norms: On the political economy of soft paternalism

Cited by 86 publications

References 47 publications

From Libertarian Paternalism to Nudging—and Beyond

From Libertarian Paternalism to Nudging—and Beyond

Behavioral political economy: A survey

Green Nudges: Do They Work? Are They Ethical?

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