Escaping Paternalism Book Club: Part 3

Summary

In Chapter 6 of Escaping Paternalism, Rizzo and Whitman argue that paternalistic behavioral economists have recklessly rushed from laboratory experiments to real life.  Even if the experiments were above reproach, their external validity is questionable at best.  Sunstein, Thaler, and the rest have overpromised and underdelivered:

A central claim of behavioral paternalists is that their approach is “evidence-based” (Thaler 2015b, 330–345). They claim to eschew ideology and simply advocat...