Arquitectura de decisiones y paternalismo libertario: hacia una microeconomía empíricamente fundamentada

Decision architecture and libertarian paternalism: towards an empirically based microeconomics

Pablo Abitbol

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: One of the most important debates in the philosophy of economic science refers to the disjunctive between instrumentalism and realism. Nudge, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, represents a milestone in the development, and possibly the consolidation, of a new realist paradigm - of an empirically-based microeconomics, as the one Herbert Simon demanded - which might displace the instrumentalist paradigm that has predominated over more than a century as the theoretical foundation of political economy. Thaler and Sunstein manage to, firstly, condense a complex characterization of economic agents, based on the empirical findings that cognitive psychology and behavioral economics have been achieving over the last thirty years; and, secondly, they manage to articulate such positive characterization of economic agents to a normative proposal on public policy and institucional design.

Keywords: Nudge; instrumentalism; realism; cognitive psychology; behavioral economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Economía & Región 2.6(2012): pp. 228-232

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:44179

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