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Behavioral Economics Commons™

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Political Economy

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Selected Works

2017

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

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 …

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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 …

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