Escaping Paternalism

Mario J. Rizzo is a professor of Economics, Director of the Foundations of the Market Economy Program, and Co-Director of the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University. He is the co-author of Austrian Economics Re-Examined: The Economics of Time and Ignorance (2014). He has published in such journals as Journal of Legal Studies, the Columbia Law Review and the UCLA Law Review. Glen Whitman is a professor of Economics at California State University, Northridge. He is the co-editor of Economics of the Undead: Zombies, Vampires, and the Dismal Science (2014). He has published in such journals as the UCLA Law Review, the Journal of Legal Studies, and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

• 1. Introduction: puppets and puppet masters; 2. What is rationality?; 3. Rationality for puppets; 4. Preference biases; 5. The rationality of beliefs; 6. Deficient foundations for behavioral policymaking; 7. Knowledge problems in paternalist policymaking; 8. The political economy of paternalist policymaking; 9. Slippery slopes in paternalist policymaking; 10. Common threads, escape routes, and paths forward; References; Index.

'Taking issue with the narrow norms of rationality in much of behavioral economics, this remarkable book argues in favor of an inclusive concept of rationality and is one of the first to cover the full range of relevant empirical evidence from psychology. Escaping Paternalism promotes a serious attempt to understand why people do what they do.' Gerd Gigerenzer, Director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin