Opportunity and Preference Learning

Schubert, Christian

doi:10.1017/s0266267115000139

“…16 Put differently, self-constitution consists of making the experience, on an ongoing basis, of trying out new preferences, discarding some of them, and keeping others. This may be referred to as a process of preference learning, see Schubert (2015a).…”

Section: The Natural and Artifactual Manmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Buchanan (1991: 284) replies: "Arguments that involve reliance on experts in certain areas of choice must be addressed to individuals, as sovereigns, and it is individuals' choice in deferring to expert-agents that legitimize the potential role of the latter, not some external assessment of epistemic competence, as such" (288). For an agency-centric discussion of this sort of outsourcing of self-governance to experts or technological nudges, see Schubert (2015a), specifically referring to Valdman (2010). 20 Buchanan states: "Individuals are to be allowed to choose among potentially available alternatives simple because they are the ultimate sovereigns.…”

Section: C2 Preferences Are Formed During the Process Of Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

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Back to Buchanan? Explorations of welfare and subjectivism in behavioral economics

Dold

¹

2018

Journal of Economic Methodology

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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: In light of behavioral findings regarding inconsistent individual decisionmaking, economists have begun to re-conceptualize the notion of welfare. One prominent account is the preference purification approach (PP), which attempts to reconstruct preferences from revealed choices based on a normative understanding of neoclassical rationality. Using Buchanan's notion of creative choice, this paper criticizes PP's epistemic, ontological, and psychological assumptions. It identifies PP as a static position that assumes the satisfaction of given 'true preferences' as the normative standard for welfare. However, following Buchanan, choice should be understood dynamically as a process whereby preferences constantly regenerate. Accordingly, the meaning of welfare emerges from an ongoing quest for individual self-constitution. If this holds true, then rationality axioms cannot serve as a priori normative standards. Instead, creative imagination and learning processes must remain central to any understanding of welfare in economics. Terms of use: Documents in

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“…6 Under standard neoclassical assumptions, on the other hand, a preference for resisting temptation through a limitation of the choice set can exist, see Gul and Pesendorfer (2001). 7 One may even find some middle ground and argue that maintaining an opportunity to learn new preferences, rather than opportunity on the level of immediate choice, is a criterion that individuals could agree on in a contractarian setting, see Schubert (2015).…”

Section: The Constitutional Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

A Constitutional Economics Perspective on Soft Paternalism

Schnellenbach

¹

2015

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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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“…54 This problem is only beginning to receive the attention it deserves, see, e.g., Sugden (2008), Angner (2016: ch. 12), Cordes andSchubert (2013), andSchubert (2015a). See Smith and Moore (2010) on some implications of using non-orthodox welfare concepts for applied cost-benefit analysis in an environmental context.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Green Nudges: Do They Work? Are They Ethical?

Schubert

¹

2016

Self Cite

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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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Opportunity and Preference Learning

Cited by 32 publications

References 48 publications

Back to Buchanan? Explorations of welfare and subjectivism in behavioral economics

Back to Buchanan? Explorations of welfare and subjectivism in behavioral economics

A Constitutional Economics Perspective on Soft Paternalism

Green Nudges: Do They Work? Are They Ethical?

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