Collective Self-Control

Alessandro Lizzeri and Leeat Yariv

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2017, vol. 9, issue 3, 213-44

Abstract: Behavioral economics presents a "paternalistic" rationale for a benevolent government's intervention. We consider an economy where the only "distortion" is agents' time-inconsistency. We study the desirability of various forms of collective action, ones pertaining to costly commitment and ones pertaining to the timing of consumption, when government decisions respond to voters' preferences via the political process. Three messages emerge. First, welfare is highest under either full centralization or laissez-faire. Second, introducing collective action only on consumption decisions yields no commitment. Last, individuals' relative preferences for commitment may reverse depending on whether future consumption decisions are centralized or not.

JEL-codes: D11 D15 D61 D72 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.20150325
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mic.20150325 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... hzM8jOGNG982B47CIrju (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... aiPyelfJQ1_vqKS-t_x9 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Collective Self Control (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:9:y:2017:i:3:p:213-44

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().