FG VWL, insbesondere Mikroökonomik
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Institute
In diesem Papier wird das Konzept des liberalen Paternalismus diskutiert, dessen Vertreter überzeugt sind, die Qualität der Entscheidungen von Individuen durch ein effizientes
Design der Randbedingungen dieser Entscheidungen verbessern zu können. Nach einem Überblick über die verhaltensökonomischen Grundlagen des liberalen Paternalismus werden
insbesondere seine normativen Grundlagen und politisch-ökonomischen Implikationen
diskutiert. Es zeigt sich, dass paternalistische Ansätze selbst Entscheidungen häufig verzerren werden und dass eine Verbesserung der Qualität individueller Entscheidungen höchst
zweifelhaft ist.
This paper discusses soft (or libertarian) paternalism, as proposed among others by Thaler and Sunstein (2008). It is argued that soft paternalism should not be understood as an efficiency-enhancing, but as a redistributive concept. The relationship between soft paternalism and social norms is discussed in detail. In particular, it is argued that soft paternalism increases the stability of given social norms, which in turn need not be efficient, nor in the material self-interest of a majority of individuals. Soft paternalism is argued to be an essentially conservative concept of policy-making in the sense that it tends to increase the longevity of status quo social norms.
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.