IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-00336528.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Libertarian Paternalism an Oxymoron?

Author

Listed:
  • Christophe Salvat

    (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

In this article I have attempted to discuss two points brought up by Sunstein and Thaler's new perspective on paternalism. The first is that whatever individuals do, they have to take second rank decisions, i.e. decisions that are equally attractive for them but impact others' people welfare. They then face a three alternative choice: either they do not care of the collateral consequences of their choice and act randomly, either they select the option that will make others better off, either they pick the option that will make others worst off. The authors assume they will necessarily act benevolently. I argued this statement is mistaken, and that the authors did not sufficiently distinguish the functional and the personal motivations of the planners. This leads me to define paternalism as the personal benevolence of the planners. Because they do not have any professional or moral duty towards the non-planners, they have absolutely no obligation to be benevolent. In most cases, the easiest choice is to act randomly. This incertitude about the planners' choice has dramatic consequences on non-planners: unless they know and trust the planners they cannot expect them to be paternalistic. They are subsequently less prone to blindly adopt default rules. The second point of the authors is that one can conceive a paternalistic system based on planners' benevolence that would not infringe libertarian principles. Default rules can, for instance, be combined with absolute freedom of choice. I argued that freedom of choice would not contribute to individual freedom if choices are not voluntary. The easiest they set up opting out options the less discriminating their system is, and eventually the most inefficient it will be.

Suggested Citation

  • Christophe Salvat, 2008. "Is Libertarian Paternalism an Oxymoron?," Working Papers hal-00336528, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00336528
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00336528
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-00336528/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Sugden, 2004. "The Opportunity Criterion: Consumer Sovereignty Without the Assumption of Coherent Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1014-1033, September.
    2. Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein, 2023. "Libertarian paternalism," Chapters, in: Cass R. Sunstein & Lucia A. Reisch (ed.), Research Handbook on Nudges and Society, chapter 1, pages 10-16, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Loewenstein, George & Adler, Daniel, 1995. "A Bias in the Prediction of Tastes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(431), pages 929-937, July.
    4. Dan Ariely & George Loewenstein & Drazen Prelec, 2003. ""Coherent Arbitrariness": Stable Demand Curves Without Stable Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 73-106.
    5. Cass R. Sunstein & Richard H. Thaler, 2003. "Libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 48(Jun).
    6. Mui, Vai-Lam, 1995. "The economics of envy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 311-336, May.
    7. Ariely, Dan & Loewenstein, George & Prelec, Drazen, 2006. "Tom Sawyer and the construction of value," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 1-10, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefan Mann & Miriam Gairing, 2012. "Does Libertarian Paternalism Reconcile Merit Goods Theory with Mainstream Economics?," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2-3), pages 206-219, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.
    2. Bruce Lyons & Robert Sugden, 2021. "Transactional fairness and pricing practices in consumer markets," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2021-03, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    3. Bruce Lyons & Robert Sugden, 2020. "Transactional fairness and unfair price discrimination in consumer markets," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2020-07, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    4. Robert Sugden, 2015. "Consumers' surplus when individuals lack integrated preferences: A development of some ideas from Dupuit," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(6), pages 1042-1063, December.
    5. Sugden, Robert, 2009. "Market simulation and the provision of public goods: A non-paternalistic response to anomalies in environmental evaluation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 87-103, January.
    6. Markus Haavio & Kaisa Kotakorpi, 2012. "Sin Licenses Revisited," CESifo Working Paper Series 4010, CESifo.
    7. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    8. Ben McQuillin & Robert Sugden, 2012. "How the market responds to dynamically inconsistent preferences," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(4), pages 617-634, April.
    9. Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Opportunity And Preference Learning," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 275-295, July.
    10. Alexia Gaudeul & Robert Sugden, 2012. "Spurious Complexity and Common Standards in Markets for Consumer Goods," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 79(314), pages 209-225, April.
    11. Ben McQuillin & Robert Sugden, 2012. "Reconciling normative and behavioural economics: the problems to be solved," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(4), pages 553-567, April.
    12. Maria Alessandra Antonelli & Valeria De Bonis & Angelo Castaldo & Alessandrao Gandolfo, 2022. "Sin goods taxation: an encompassing model," Public Finance Research Papers 52, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    13. Roberto Fumagalli, 2016. "Decision sciences and the new case for paternalism: three welfare-related justificatory challenges," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(2), pages 459-480, August.
    14. Christian Schubert, 2015. "On the ethics of public nudging: Autonomy and Agency," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201533, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    15. Ghesla, Claus & Grieder, Manuel & Schubert, Renate, 2020. "Nudging the poor and the rich – A field study on the distributional effects of green electricity defaults," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    16. Marco Fabbri & Michael Faure, 2018. "Toward a “constitution” for behavioral policy-making," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 65(3), pages 241-270, September.
    17. Guilhem Lecouteux & Léonard Moulin, 2013. "From welfare to preferences, do decision flaws matter? The case of tuition fees," Working Papers hal-00807687, HAL.
    18. Schubert, Christian, 2017. "Green nudges: Do they work? Are they ethical?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 329-342.
    19. Martin Binder, 2019. "Soft paternalism and subjective well-being: how happiness research could help the paternalist improve individuals’ well-being," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 539-561, April.
    20. Agee, Mark D. & Crocker, Thomas D., 2013. "Operationalizing the capability approach to assessing well-being," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 80-86.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00336528. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.