Avoiding Paternalism

Optimal Paternalism∗

If one accepts some paternalistic objectives, how should this shape policy? This paper addresses this issue by considering the trade-off that results when agents have superior information regarding their own situation and tastes but a paternalistic principal views agents’ tastes as as being biased. Applications include: savings behavior by hyperbolic discounting consumers, schooling choice by t...

Normative and non-normative concepts: Paternalism and libertarian paternalism

This chapter concerns the normativity of the concepts of paternalism and libertarian paternalism. The first concept is central to evaluation of public health policy, but its meaning is controversial. The second concept is equally controversial and has received much attention recently. It may or may not shape the future evaluation of public health policy. In order to facilitate honest and fruitf...

Welfare and Paternalism

Citizens’ desires to assist the poor reflect a mixture of insurance motives, altruism, and paternalism. Consequently, government policies toward the poor have always been a mixture of income supports and regulations of recipient behavior. Unfortunately, there have been very few analyses of the how these distinct motives interact to generate various policies to the poor. In this paper, we develo...

Paternalism with hindsight: do protégés react consequentialistically to paternalism?

We investigate experimentally whether the protégés’ reaction to paternalism depends on the consequences of the paternalistic action to their well-being. We find that protégés punish a paternalist restricting their freedom of choice. Yet, this negative reaction is not based on principled grounds because, with hindsight, protégés punish the paternalist only if the restriction makes them worse off...

Paternalism in the