Niclas Berggren

2012/9/1

The Review of Austrian Economics

25

3

199-221

Springer US

Abstract This study analyzes leading research in behavioral economics to see whether it
contains advocacy of paternalism and whether it addresses the potential cognitive
limitations and biases of the policymakers who are going to implement paternalist policies.
The findings reveal that 20.7% of the studied articles in behavioral economics propose
paternalist policy action and that 95.5% of these do not contain any analysis of the cognitive
ability of policymakers. This suggests that behavioral political economy, in which the ...