About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

39 Yale J. on Reg. 1274 (2022)
Democratizing Behavioral Economics

handle is hein.journals/yjor39 and id is 1283 raw text is: Democratizing Behavioral Economics Zachary Liscow & Daniel Markovitst Behavioral law and economics (BLE') arising from the insight that people make recognizable, systematic mistakes has revolutionized policymaking. For example, in governments around the world, including the US, teams of experts seek to harness these insights, promising to do things like increase retirement savings. But there is a problem: economic experts do not look or think like the rest of the population. Their demographics and policy views are deeply unrepresentative. This would be less troubling if the experts were merely helping people pursue the behavior that the people themselves would undertake, as was the case in traditional law and economics. However, the whole point of behavioral economics is that such behavior is often not in people's interest. Rather, in making judgments about the right policy, BLE has erected a new, shaky structure, based on ad hoc and often unstated normative assumptions. The result risks merely enacting the policy preferences (or biases) of unrepresentative experts and thereby distorting policymaking. We propose a new approach democratic BLE in which behavioral economists, rather than dictating what the right policy or action is, instead inform representative samples of ordinary people about the evidence, including specifically about their own behavioral biases, and let them decide for themselves. Those decisions, rather than experts' opinions alone, then inform policymakers. Our approach harnesses the insights of behavioral economics, but in a way that lets the people themselves, rather than the behavioral expert, be the arbiter of the good life. t Yale Law School; zachary.liscow@yale.edu, daniel.markovits@yale.edu. Thanks to Jason Abaluck, Anne Alstott, Oren Bar-Gill, Ryan Bubb, Justin Driver, Lee Fennell, Ray Fisman, Jacob Goldin, Andrew Hayashi, Christine Jolls, Shachar Kariv, Max Kasy, Daryl Levinson, Jeff Rachlinski, Sarath Sanga, Alan Schwartz, Cass Sunstein, Josh Teitelbaum, Kristen Underhill, Glen Weyl, Gui Woolston, and participants in workshops at Boston University Law School, Cornell Law School, ETH Zurich, the University of Hamburg Institute for Law and Economics, and Yale Law School for helpful comments and to Emily Caputo, Audrey Cheng, Mia Dana, David Herman, Eugene Kim, and Sherry Tanious for outstanding research assistance. 1274

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most