New Paper by Mario Rizzo

2 February 2007 at 8:38 am Nicolai Foss Leave a comment

| Nicolai Foss |

Just back from a loooong vacation in Vietnam, involving plenty of trashy crime novels; what better way is there to recover intellectually than reading a characteristically thoughtful paper by Mario Rizzo?

In “Paternalist Slopes,” Mario and his co-author Glen Whitman take issue with those who use arguments from the “biases” part of the bounded rationality literature to justify interventionism. Here is the abstract:

A growing literature in law and public policy harnesses research in behavioral economics to justify a new form of paternalism. Contributors to this literature typically emphasize the modest, non-intrusive character of their proposals. A distinct literature in law and public policy analyzes the validity of “slippery slope” arguments. Contributors to this literature have identified various mechanisms and processes by which slippery slopes operate, as well as the circumstances in which the threat of such slopes is greatest. The present article sits at the nexus of the new paternalist literature and the slippery slopes literature. We argue that the new paternalism exhibits many characteristics identified by the slopes literature as conducive to slippery slopes. Specifically, the new paternalism exhibits considerable theoretical and empirical vagueness, making it vulnerable to slopes resulting from altered economic incentives, enforcement needs, deference to perceived authority, bias toward simple principles, and reframing of the status quo. These slope processes are especially likely when decisionmakers are subject to cognitive biases – as the new paternalists insist they are. Consequently, soft paternalism can pave the way for harder paternalism. We conclude that policymaking based on new paternalist reasoning should be considered with greater trepidation than its advocates have suggested.