A constitutional economics perspective on soft paternalism

Jan Schnellenbach

No 15/02, Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics from Walter Eucken Institut e.V.

Abstract: Using a framework that distinguishes short-term consumer preferences, individual reflective preferences and political preferences, we discuss from a constitutional economics perspective whether individuals find it in their common constitutional interest to endow representatives and bureaucrats with the competence to impose soft paternalist policies. The focus is specifically on soft paternalist policies, because these often work with non-transparent 'nudges' that are considered as manipulative in some contributions to the literature. We show that those soft paternalist policies that are manipulative indeed collide with three criteria of consumer sovereignty, reflective sovereignty and citizen sovereignty that can be argued to represent common constitutional interest of citizens. On the other hand, we argue that the set of paternalist policies that is deemed acceptable on the constitutional level is restricted to non-manipulative instruments, and their application as government policies is limited to cases with stable and very homogenous preferences. However, we also argue that competitive markets are capable of supplying many mechanisms that allow individuals to cope with problems in their decision-making processes on a private level.

Keywords: nudge; biases; autonomy; consumer sovereignty; reflective preferences; behavioural policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 D18 D63 D83 H11 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: A Constitutional Economics Perspective on Soft Paternalism (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:aluord:1502

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