Agoraphilia

In a New York Times op-ed , George Loewenstein and Peter Ubel argue that policymakers are relying too heavily on behavioral economics, when ...

The Cato Unbound discussion on new paternalism has come to a close, but I want to address a few loose ends that came up during the exchange...

At Cato Unbound, I've replied to Richard Thaler here , and to Jonathan Klick here . My reply to Shane Frederick should go up tomorrow. ...

Jonathan Klick and Shane Frederick have now posted their responses. I am now at liberty to respond to all three responses, which I plan t...

New paternalist Richard Thaler has posted his response to my essay on Cato Unbound. I won't be posting a reply until after all three r...

I wrote the lead essay in this month's Cato Unbound . The subject is "Slippery Slopes and the New Paternalism." A familiar ...

Mario Rizzo and I have recently published another article on the new paternalism, titled " The Knowledge Problem of New Paternalism ,...

This will be the final installment in my series of excerpts from Mario’s and my article on the slippery-slope potential of new paternalism....

Some new paternalists have recognized the slippery-slope objections to their approach, and they have made some effort to respond. But we fi...

And after another long interruption, I’m finally going to finish my series of excerpts from Mario Rizzo’s and my article, “Little Brother Is...

As discussed in a previous post in this series, the new paternalists often use the concept of hyperbolic discounting (roughly, excessive im...

Happy new year! After a holiday-induced hiatus, I’m now resuming the series of excerpts from Mario Rizzo’s and my recently published articl...

As discussed in the previous post, the “experts” in charge of implementing new paternalist policies will have a tendency to simplify their o...

Another problem with the new paternalism is that it necessarily involves greater deference to the authority of experts. Here is the basic l...

New paternalists have also relied on the notion of context dependence to justify their policies. But as with hyperbolic discounting, they u...

New paternalists often rely on the phenomenon of “hyperbolic discounting” to justify their policies. Hyperbolic discounting is difficult to...

A key conclusion of the literature on slippery slopes is that they are especially likely in the presence of gradients -- meaning situations ...

Mario Rizzo and I have just published a new article, "Little Brother Is Watching You: New Paternalism on the Slippery Slopes," in...

In my last post , I drew attention to the many policies that Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler have said are consistent with “libertarian pat...

In the past, I’ve found “hate crimes” legislation troubling because any differential in punishment – such as the punishment for killing beca...