Individual Irrationality and Public Policy: In Search of Merit/Demerit Policies

Cliff Walsh

Journal of Public Policy, 1987, vol. 7, issue 2, 103-134

Abstract: In the context of a re-examination of the conceptual and political foundations of merit/demerit goods, this paper attempts to identify how far they might take us in understanding, explaining, and providing normative justification for, public sector intervention. If merit/demerit influences are to be discovered in actual policies they must be capable of being isolated, at least at the margin, from other policy influences, such as conventional sources of market failure, pure paternalism, and pressure group activities.

Date: 1987
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