Free to fail? Paternalistic preferences in the United States

Björn Bartling, Alexander Cappelen, Henning Hermes, Marit Skivenes and Bertil Tungodden

No 436, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: This paper examines paternalistic preferences in large-scale experiments in the U.S. Participants decide whether to intervene to prevent a stakeholder, mistaken about their options, to make a choice that is misaligned with their preferences. We find that the willingness to intervene strongly depends on the nature of the paternalistic intervention: only a minority implements a hard intervention that limits the freedom to choose, while a majority implements a soft intervention that provides information without restricting the choice set. Based on a theoretical framework, we estimate that about half of the participants are welfarists, while a third are libertarian paternalists.

Keywords: Paternalism; libertarian paternalism; welfarism; freedom to choose (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D69 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-05, Revised 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dcm, nep-exp and nep-nud
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Free to Fail? Paternalistic Preferences in the United States (2023)
Working Paper: Free to Fail? Paternalistic Preferences in the United States (2023)
Working Paper: Free to Fail? Paternalistic Preferences in the United States (2023)
Working Paper: Free to Fail? Paternalistic Preferences in the United States (2023)
Working Paper: Free to fail? Paternalistic preferences in the United States (2023)
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