The Thaler Nobel: A Nudge to Progressivism in a Populist Age

Richard Thaler won the 2017 economics Nobel. Another win for Chicago. Ironic, in a way, given that in many ways Thaler is the anti-Chicago. The fact that the prime critic of homo economicus is on the faculty of the school most associated with neoclassical economics that utilizes homo economicus as its primary analytic engine is an indication of Chicago’s self-confidence, and reflects a belief that intellectual tension is a spur to scholarly innovation. Also, it may well indicate a canny instinct about future trends in economic science.

Insofar as the Nobel is a measure of impact, this one is warranted: there is no doubt that behavioral economics, of which Thaler is the recognized leader, has had an impact on the profession. That said, this area was recently recognized with Kahneman’s Nobel a few years back, and it would have been preferable IMO to have awarded Thaler along with Kahneman.

Insofar as the substance of behavioral economics is concerned, I largely agree with Mario Rizzo’s opinions on the Thaler award. Along with Rizzo, I find it useful to divide things into positive and normative economics.

With respect to positive economics, as Rizzo notes the primary use of the rational actor assumption is to derive predictions about aggregate/market behavior. It is not at all evident how the irrational actor assumption leads to more empirically robust models.  I vividly recall Gary Becker’s discussion of irrationality in an Econ 301 class at Chicago, in which he showed that rationality (in the form of utility maximization) is not necessary to derive the law of demand (though it is sufficient). Random choices on the budget line lead to a downward sloping demand curve, meaning that the location of the opportunity set, rather than how agents choose a point on that budget set, is the more important factor in causing the demand curve to slope down.

Indeed, there is a danger of falling prey to the fallacy of composition: even if certain behaviors are observed at the level of the individual does not imply that they will characterize behavior at larger elements of aggregation. Allowing for individual irrationality certainly adds modeling degrees of freedom, but that’s more of a bug than a feature, especially given the now vast number of alleged behavioral biases. There is always the risk of cherry picking this bias or that to explain a particular phenomenon, and then cherry picking another (which could be completely at odds with the first one) to explain another. This creates the risk that behavioral economics is empirically vacuous.

Further, there are already plenty of degrees of freedom even within the standard economics maximizing agent framework. Information environment–note that the most die-hard advocate of neoclassical economics and the exemplar of the Chicago School, introduced costly information in the form of search costs to explain price dispersion, which is inexplicable in the Marshallian costless information, perfect competition framework. Preferences–which raises a question: is habit persistence rational or irrational? Strategic interaction–one of the problems with game theory is that virtually any outcome is possible with rational actors depending on the details of the game, the information environment, beliefs, etc. Many phenomenon that seemed anomalous in one type of model with rational actors have been explained by tweaking one of these features all the while retaining the rational actor assumption.

So I’ve yet to see how deviating from the maximizing agent framework (and maximization is really what rationality means) improves the ability of economics to improve the empirical performance of its predictions regarding aggregate/market behavior. Meaning that the contributions of behavioral economics to positive economics are dubious, in the sense that they are unnecessary, and often subject to abuse.

But what really distinguishes behavioral economics is its avowedly normative thrust. People are irrational, and would be better off in objectively measurable ways if these behavioral biases were corrected. Furthermore, many behavioral economists, and Thaler specifically, are quite confident in their ability to identify and correct these biases–and make people better off–through “nudges”.

I have two major objections to this. The first is the fallacy of composition problem mentioned earlier. Nudged agents interact in markets, organizations, and institutions. Individual behavioral changes will lead to changes in prices and market outcomes. It does not follow that “better” individual behavior will result in “better” market outcomes–that’s the fallacy of composition in action. Economies are emergent orders, and small changes in individual behavior can lead to very different emergent outcomes. The law of unintended consequences is ruthless in its operation in emergent settings.

My second objection is more straightforward. Behavioral economics of the nudge variety is relentlessly progressive, in the political sense. There are the elite nudgers, and the irrational hoi polloi who can be improved by the beneficent interventions of the nudgers. Moreover, the elite are apparently not just benevolent, but also devoid of their own behavioral biases.

To which I reply: one of the major biases identified by behavioral economists is the overconfidence bias. Mightn’t the nudgers be particularly prone to that bias? The likely commission of the fallacy of composition suggests that they are. As does the dreary experience of social and behavioral engineering efforts large and small, where technocratic elites in their overweening confidence wreaked great havoc around the world.

Ironically, I would assert that behavioral economics actually feeds the overconfidence bias among its practitioners. A seemingly powerful intellectual tool has the tendency to do that. In economics, I would proffer Keynesianism as an example.

Shall we consider other biases as well? Given that there are many of them, we could be here for a while. Suffice it to say that once you admit the nudgers are themselves imperfect decision makers, the case for nudging becomes very weak indeed. When you add the fact that even Spock-like nudgers operate with seriously limited information (about outcomes of emergent social processes in particular), the case becomes weaker still.

Behavioral economics therefore is just what a would-be technocratic elite ordered. It provides a justification for their existence, and also for an existence that should be independent of check by popular institutions. For it would be irrational, wouldn’t it, to subject rational, bias-free technocrats to the whims of irrational individuals crippled by various behavioral biases? Decision making elites unconstrained by popular forces is the essence of progressivism (and in its extreme form, totalitarianism).

Behavioral economics is particularly precious to the elite in this populist age when technocratic elites are under attack from the hoi polloi. The Nobel committees are notoriously political, and often make political statements through their choices. I would not be surprised if the Thaler award has a strong political undercurrent, given the palpable elite panic at resurgent populism, and the decidedly elitist, progressive thrust of behavioral economics generally, and its Thaler-inspired nudge variety in particular.

Behavioral economics is very congenial to top-down approaches to social problems. It is viewed by deep skepticism with people like me who believe that the knowledge problem; emergence and the law of unintended consequences; and the deforming effects and perverse incentives of power (to name just three things) make top down solutions disastrous in most cases.

So the Thaler Nobel is accurately reflective of the influence of behavioral economics on the profession, and on the profession’s contribution to policy debates. And that is a disturbing reality.