If you haven’t heard of Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman‘s Escaping Paternalism, you should. The book is an unbelievably learned, thoughtful, fair, wise, and inspired critique of applied behavioral economics in general and libertarian paternalism (a.k.a. “nudge“) in particular.
The book is not light reading. While Rizzo and Whitman patiently introduce readers to key research and concepts in behavioral economics as they go, specialists are their target audience. The upshot: this is a perfect opportunity for a new book club to walk a broader audience through this outstanding work of scholarship.
If you want to be part of the book club, I suggest you purchase Escaping Paternalism now and get reading. I’ll post the first installment roughly one month from today, and follow up with at least three more posts. Readers can leave their reactions in the comments. Then, one or both of the authors will publish guest posts responding to both myself and EconLog readers. I’ll post my followup reactions, and give Mario and Glen the final word.
Who’s with me?
READER COMMENTS
Jason Ford
Jun 17 2020 at 11:39am
I’m in! Re-reading “How to Win Friends and Influence People” definitely improved my life. I’ll take your word that this book will be a worthwhile experience. I’ll make sure not to ask too many questions or pontificate too much this time.
Jason Ford
Jun 22 2020 at 8:57am
I finished the introduction and the first three chapters and would highly recommend this book so far. So far, this book has spent a large amount of time addressing a question that is all too often overlooked in social sciences: “why do people behave as they do now?” Social sciences often go from “how do people behave?” to “how should people behave?” and spend too little time on the crucial question in between.
Jason Ford
Jul 6 2020 at 10:42pm
Finished it! Thanks for the recommendation. It’s a challenging read for someone like me who doesn’t have an advanced degree, but well worth the effort. For anyone reading it who doesn’t have a P.hd, I recommend taking your time and spend time between readings thinking of examples in your own or other’s lives of what the writers are talking about. How do we make decisions? How do we try to overcome bad habits? When and why do we voluntarily assume risk? There’s a lot to think about and discuss here.
John Alcorn
Jun 17 2020 at 11:58am
In. Thanks for the series of book clubs!
Sergio Martinez
Jun 17 2020 at 3:52pm
I just bought the book. I’m in.
mark
Jun 19 2020 at 8:33am
I pass. The kindle-version is 20€, no used-ones available, even our libraries do not have it. And the opportunity-cost, so much else to read. – Will follow the club, though. What could be wrong with nudging, esp. more wrong than with bad-old-forcing-me into e.g. the state pension system or public school?! The best thing about nudging is one can escape! – And none of “us” Caplan-readers need to be taught the idea, that freer markets will usu. provide better value. So, honestly curious: what to learn? – Will follow, will learn. Thanks for nudging us into another book-club – simply by offering one for free 😉 Paternalism may be fine from time to time. (caplan-twins)
Handle
Jun 19 2020 at 4:26pm
Here’s a think which can be wrong with nudging, which is based on the very logic used to justify “choice architecture”.
Let’s say you have a population with two groups, A and B. And you offer them a choice between X and Y.
Members of A benefit – by their own standard, by assumption – from X, and likewise for B and Y.
But, if the default is Y, some members of A – call them A.1s will switch, but some A.2s won’t. Changing the default to X helps the A.2s and is neutral for the A.1s.
But uh oh, What about the B’s? Under a default of Y, all the B’s are fine, but if you switch the default to X to help out the A.2s, you *hurt* the B.2s, who are now in the wrong choice for them, and not inclinced to switch.
In order to justify a nudge then, you can’t just show that a bunch of A.2s exist and would be helped, which is almost always as far as that type of “behavioral economics” case goes.
What you actually have to do to justify the nudege is show that this improvement is *clearly much greater* than the cost imposed on the B.2s. That’s pretty hard, and how does one even pick a standard objective metric in order to measure that?
The point is, by nudge logic, every possible nudge has a potentially helped population and a potentially hurt population.
What ends up happening of course is that the nudger or nudge advocate just substitutes his own preferences and opinions for what would be better for everybody and goes with his gut feeling that there are in fact no harmed B.2s, or they are always negligible and can be ignored, because X is always the right move for everybody.
Handle
Jun 20 2020 at 3:26pm
Did anybody else get the paperback and find their book was printed backwards?
SaveyourSelf
Jun 20 2020 at 11:29pm
A credible challenge to libertarianism? I don’t believe it. I’m in.
IronSig
Jun 22 2020 at 3:25pm
I just received my Kindle Copy. I found a podcast promoting Paleoconservatism over the weekend that featured a brief review of Thinking Fast and Slow, so the alleged behavioral challenge to neoclassical and Austrian methods is coincidentally fresh in my mind [ https://www.natureandthenation.com/%5D.
It’s good to see that Bryan has talked Rizzo & Whitman into engaging with the Econlog audience. I hope that the book will cleanly represent all ideas from the burgeoning behavioral movement.
Mark Z
Jun 22 2020 at 5:48pm
This book sounds similar to Robert Sugden’s book Community of Advantage: A Behavioral Economist’s Defence of the Market. I wonder if their general arguments are thematically similar. If only the libraries were open I wouldn’t have to mull over spending the $30.
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