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Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Economics

Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slaviša Tasić Mar 2017

Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slaviša Tasić

Gary M. Lucas Jr.

Behavioral public choice is the study of irrationality among political actors. In this context, irrationality means systematic bias, a deviation from rational expectations, or other departure from economists’ conception of rationality. Behavioral public choice scholars extend the insights of behavioral economics to the political realm and show that irrational behavior is an important source of government failure. This Article makes an original contribution to the legal literature by systematically reviewing the findings of behavioral public choice and explaining their implications for the law and legal institutions. We discuss the various biases and heuristics that lead political actors to support and …


Conservatism And Switcher's Curse, Aaron Edlin Dec 2016

Conservatism And Switcher's Curse, Aaron Edlin

Aaron Edlin

This paper formally models the virtues of Edmund Burke's conservatism, characterizes the optimal level of conservatism, and applies the model to management, law, and policy.  I begin by introducing ``switcher's curse,'' a trap in which a decision maker systematically switches too often. Decision makers suffer from switcher's curse if they forget the reason that they maintained incumbent policies in the past and if they naively compare rival and incumbent policies with no bias for incumbent policies.   Conservatism emerges as a heuristic to avoid switcher's curse. The longer a process or policy has been in place, the more conservative one …


Behavioral Economics And Poverty [En Español] Behavioral Economics Y Pobreza, Daniel A. Monroy Oct 2015

Behavioral Economics And Poverty [En Español] Behavioral Economics Y Pobreza, Daniel A. Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

No abstract provided.


Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton Jun 2015

Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton

Timothy D. Lytton

This essay critically evaluates Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s proposal to allow patients to prospectively waive their rights to bring a malpractice claim, presented in their recent, much acclaimed book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. We show that the behavioral insights that undergird Nudge do not support the waiver proposal. In addition, we demonstrate that Thaler and Sunstein have not provided a persuasive cost-benefit justification for the proposal. Finally, we argue that their liberty-based defense of waivers rests on misleading analogies and polemical rhetoric that ignore the liberty and other interests served by patients’ tort law rights. …


On The Proper Motives Of Corporate Directors (Or, Why You Don't Want To Invite Homo Economicus To Join Your Board), Lynn A. Stout Feb 2015

On The Proper Motives Of Corporate Directors (Or, Why You Don't Want To Invite Homo Economicus To Join Your Board), Lynn A. Stout

Lynn A. Stout

One of the most important questions in corporate governance is how directors of public corporations can be motivated to serve the interests of the firm. Directors frequently hold only small stakes in the companies they manage. Moreover, a variety of legal rules and contractual arrangements insulate them from liability for business failures. Why then should we expect them to do a good job? Conventional corporate scholarship has great difficulty wrestling with this question, in large part because conventional scholarship usually adopts the economist's assumption that directors are rational actors motivated purely by self-interest. This homo economicus model of behavior may …


A Framework For Understanding Property Regulation And Land Use Control From A Dynamic Perspective, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2014

A Framework For Understanding Property Regulation And Land Use Control From A Dynamic Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Our land use control system operates across a variety of multidimensional and dynamic categories. Learning to navigate within and between these categories requires an appreciation for their interconnected, dynamic, and textured components and an awareness of alternative mechanisms for achieving one’s land use control preferences and one’s desired ends. Whether seeking to minimize controls as a property owner or attempting to place controls on the land uses of another, one should take time to understand the full ecology of the system. This Article looks at four broad categories of control: (1) no controls, or the state of nature; (2) judicial …


The Homo [Not So] Economicus And The Law: A Critique Of Positive Theory Of Rational Choice In The Law [En Español], Daniel A. Monroy Feb 2014

The Homo [Not So] Economicus And The Law: A Critique Of Positive Theory Of Rational Choice In The Law [En Español], Daniel A. Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

From the Behavioral Economics point of view, this paper presents a critic to one dimension of rational choice theory that is widely accepted by Law and Economics scholars. Our hypothesis is that (i) individuals deviate anomalously but predictably of normative assumption of rational choice. We suggests that, (ii) more than –unbounded– rational self interested individuals, in certain contexts, people tend to deviate from this normative behavior and also, tend to judge the behavior of other people, according to the consistency of these behaviors with a hypothetical situation commonly referred to as the "reference transaction".

Desde la perspectiva del Behavioral Economics, …


The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2013

The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Article is a first-of-its-kind application of public choice theory to recently developing theories of virtue jurisprudence. Particularly, this Article focuses on not-yet-developed theories of aretaic (or virtue-centered) legislation. This Article speculates what the contours of such theories might be and analyzes the production of such legislation through a public choice lens. Any virtue jurisprudence theory as applied to legislation would likely demand that the proper ends of legislation be deemed as “the promotion of human flourishing” and the same would constitute the test by which we would determine the legitimacy of any legislation. As noble as virtuous behavior, virtuous …


Strategic Default In Joint Liability Groups: Evidence From A Natural Experiment In India, Xavier Gine, Karuna Krishnaswamy, Alejandro Ponce Nov 2013

Strategic Default In Joint Liability Groups: Evidence From A Natural Experiment In India, Xavier Gine, Karuna Krishnaswamy, Alejandro Ponce

Alejandro Ponce

Despite the high repayment rates claimed by microcredit programs around the world, some groups of borrowers eventually default and are subsequently disbanded. Exposure to common shocks and strategic default are reasons for the deterioration in group repayment but identification of the precise mechanism is difficult. In this paper we exploit an announcement issued by the Anjuman Committee of a town in southern India banning all Muslims from repaying their microfinance loans. Using administrative data we find that borrowers in Muslim-dominated groups have higher default rates after the announcement compared to the same borrowers with loans in Hindu-dominated groups. We conclude …


Are People Probabilistically Challenged? Book Review Of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast And Slow (2011), Alex Stein Mar 2013

Are People Probabilistically Challenged? Book Review Of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast And Slow (2011), Alex Stein

Alex Stein

Daniel Kahneman’s recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, is a must-read for any scholar and policymaker interested in behavioral economics. Thus far, behavioral economists did predominantly experimental work that uncovered discrete manifestations of people’s bounded rationality: representativeness, availability, anchoring, overoptimism, base-rate neglect, hindsight bias, loss aversion, and other misevaluations of probability and utility. This work has developed no causal explanations for these misevaluations. Kahneman’s book takes the discipline to a different level by developing an integrated theory of bounded rationality’s causes and characteristics. This theory holds that humans use two distinct modes of reasoning, intuitive (System 1) and deliberative (System …


Enfoques Teóricos De Las Reglas Por Defecto En El Derecho De Contratos: Complementariedades, Coincidencias Y Contradicciones, Daniel Monroy Dec 2012

Enfoques Teóricos De Las Reglas Por Defecto En El Derecho De Contratos: Complementariedades, Coincidencias Y Contradicciones, Daniel Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

El artículo muestra una lectura crítica en lo que respecta a la noción, las funciones y el diseño de las reglas por defecto en el derecho de contratos a partir de tres enfoques teóricos a saber: la perspectiva jurídica tradicional; la visión del Análisis Económico del Derecho (AED) en su versión clásica y; el enfoque del denominado behavioral law and economics (BL&E). El documento destaca con particular atención que en lo correspondiente a la noción y las funciones de las reglas por defecto en el derecho de contratos, existe un alto nivel de coherencia entre la perspectiva jurídica tradicional por …


El Individuo Y La Comunidad. Aeon J. Skoble, Mario Šilar Jan 2012

El Individuo Y La Comunidad. Aeon J. Skoble, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


El Fracaso: Su Utilidad Personal Y Social, Mario Šilar Jan 2012

El Fracaso: Su Utilidad Personal Y Social, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


The Role Of The Law In The Availability Of Public Transit And Affordable Housing In Atlanta’S West End, Elliott Lipinsky Jan 2012

The Role Of The Law In The Availability Of Public Transit And Affordable Housing In Atlanta’S West End, Elliott Lipinsky

ELLIOTT LIPINSKY

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation that administers federal funds and provides technical assistance for the support of locally operated public transit systems. MARTA / Atlanta metro area are part of FTA Region IV (the Southeast). FTA would be involved, for instance, in financing the federal grant monies discussed above. But actual regulation of operations (i.e., what MARTA does each day, or what MARTA will plan to do regionally) is more closely regulated by Georgia agencies.

Until recently, the Atlanta metropolitan area had no powerful central agency to coordinate regional transit. The …


Free The Market. Peter J. Boettke. Spanish Translation, Mario Šilar Oct 2011

Free The Market. Peter J. Boettke. Spanish Translation, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


Teoría Prospectiva, Efecto Marco Y Los Mensajes De Disuasión De Consumo De Tabaco En Colombia, Daniel Monroy Jun 2011

Teoría Prospectiva, Efecto Marco Y Los Mensajes De Disuasión De Consumo De Tabaco En Colombia, Daniel Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

The main target of this reflex paper is to explain some ideas about behavioral economics, such as the Prospect Theory and the framing effect, as well as its possible implications for the law, especially in the context of tobacco control law in Colombia and the current package warning labels. The paper concludes that these warnings have the potential to reduce the tobacco consumption. However the effectiveness of these messages could be increased if the information is reframed in an alternative way.

This paper is based in other one called: "ANÁLISIS ECONÓMICO-CONDUCTUAL DE LA REGULACIÓN ANTITABACO EN COLOMBIA: El efecto marco …


Más Vale Malo Conocido Que…: El Efecto Dotación Y Los Pronósticos Teóricos Del Teorema De Coase, Daniel Monroy May 2011

Más Vale Malo Conocido Que…: El Efecto Dotación Y Los Pronósticos Teóricos Del Teorema De Coase, Daniel Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

Some studies of the "endowment effect" in behavioral economics have criticized the theoretical prediction of the Coase Theorem even in its most basic formulation. This document describes the evidence of the existence of this "anomaly" in individual decision-making in various contexts in order to determine the possible general implications of this effect in the economic analysis itself especially as an explanation for the sometimes, insuperable gap between the willingness to accept for giving a right and the correlative willingness to pay to get it, also the paper describes a contradiction with the assumption of reversibility of preferences at any dot …


How Much Does A Belief Cost?: Revisiting The Marketplace Of Ideas, Gregory Brazeal Jan 2011

How Much Does A Belief Cost?: Revisiting The Marketplace Of Ideas, Gregory Brazeal

Gregory Brazeal

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is often credited with creating the metaphor of “the marketplace of ideas,” though he did not use the exact phrase and his argument for free speech was not based on distinctively economic reasoning. Truly economic investigations of the marketplace of ideas have progressed in step with developments and trends in the law and economics literature. These investigations have tended to be one-sided, with writers focusing primarily either on the production of ideas (for example, Posner) or their consumption (for example, behavioral law and economics), without considering in depth how producers and consumers interact. This may …


Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz Jan 2011

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …


Natural Law Bibliography 1990-2010, Mario Šilar Jan 2011

Natural Law Bibliography 1990-2010, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


Antropología Filosófica Cristiana Y Economía De Mercado (Review). Revista Empresa Y Humanismo, Xiv/2, 2011, Pp. 121-127., Mario Šilar Jan 2011

Antropología Filosófica Cristiana Y Economía De Mercado (Review). Revista Empresa Y Humanismo, Xiv/2, 2011, Pp. 121-127., Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


"Faraway So Close". Maestros Y Discípulos En La Era Digital, Mario Šilar Jan 2011

"Faraway So Close". Maestros Y Discípulos En La Era Digital, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


The Call Of The Entrepreneur (Acton Media): Un Análisis, Mario Šilar Jan 2011

The Call Of The Entrepreneur (Acton Media): Un Análisis, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


The Economics Of Caring And Sharing. D.R. Lee. Spanish Translation, Mario Šilar Jan 2011

The Economics Of Caring And Sharing. D.R. Lee. Spanish Translation, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


Austrian School In 10 Propositions, By Peter J. Boettke, Mario Šilar Jan 2011

Austrian School In 10 Propositions, By Peter J. Boettke, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


Christianism And Liberalism. Conference Script. Diego De Covarrubias. San Pablo Ceu, Madrid, 12.12.2011, Mario Šilar Jan 2011

Christianism And Liberalism. Conference Script. Diego De Covarrubias. San Pablo Ceu, Madrid, 12.12.2011, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


Un Significativo Y Poco Difundido Discurso De Benedicto Xvi: El Mensaje A La Academia Pontificia De Ciencias Sociales Del Año 2011, Mario Šilar Jan 2011

Un Significativo Y Poco Difundido Discurso De Benedicto Xvi: El Mensaje A La Academia Pontificia De Ciencias Sociales Del Año 2011, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


The Call Of The Entrepreneur (Acton Media): An Analysis, Mario Šilar Jan 2011

The Call Of The Entrepreneur (Acton Media): An Analysis, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.


Regulaciones Que Nos Hacen Más Inteligentes, Daniel Monroy Jan 2011

Regulaciones Que Nos Hacen Más Inteligentes, Daniel Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

En presente artículo es una síntesis de algunas ideas puntuales relacionadas con las posibles consecuencias y retos que puede tener para el derecho la asunción de algunas ideas propias de la economía conductual, tal como la aceptación relativa a que los individuos muestran en su toma de decisiones, en ocasiones, una fuerza de voluntad limitada.


Innovation Cooperation: Energy Biosciences And Law, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson Jan 2011

Innovation Cooperation: Energy Biosciences And Law, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This Article analyzes the development and dissemination of environmentally sound technologies that can address climate change. Climate change poses catastrophic health and security risks on a global scale. Universities, individual innovators, private firms, civil society, governments, and the United Nations can unite in the common goal to address climate change. This Article recommends means by which legal, scientific, engineering, and a host of other public and private actors can bring environmentally sound innovation into widespread use to achieve sustainable development. In particular, universities can facilitate this collaboration by fostering global innovation and diffusion networks.