IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6911.html

Liberty and the Post-Utilitarian Society

Author

Listed:
  • Saint-Paul, Gilles

    (Paris School of Economics)

Abstract

Utilitarian foundations for limited government are shaky insofar as they assume rational and consistent individuals. Recently economists' assumption of rational actors has come under sustained attack. Behavioural economics has suggested that people are plagued by irrational biases and inconsistencies. The author elucidates how these developments have led to a post-utilitarianism which is held to justify paternalistic interventions by the state via 'sin taxes', direct bans or new obligations. Individual responsibility is seriously undermined, as is faith in markets. He concludes that supporters of individual freedom need to move away from utilitarian reasoning, reassert core values of autonomy and responsibility, and define strict limits on the scope of government intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Saint-Paul, Gilles, 2012. "Liberty and the Post-Utilitarian Society," IZA Discussion Papers 6911, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6911
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6911.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward L. Glaeser, 2005. "Paternalism and Psychology," NBER Working Papers 11789, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1325-1348, December.
    3. Colin Camerer & George Loewenstein & Drazen Prelec, 2005. "Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience Can Inform Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 43(1), pages 9-64, March.
    4. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
    5. Thaler, Richard, 1980. "Toward a positive theory of consumer choice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 39-60, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Sin taxes and liberty
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2012-12-21 21:02:00
    2. It Would be Well if Economics Were Modest for it has Much to be Modest About
      by William Black in New Economic Perspectives on 2015-01-15 18:15:44

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mario GRAZIANO & Daniele SCHILIRÒ, 2011. "Rationality And Choices In Economics: Behavioral And Evolutionary Approaches," Theoretical and Practical Research in the Economic Fields, ASERS Publishing, vol. 2(2), pages 182-195.
    2. Gilles Saint-Paul, 2012. "Liberté et société post-utilitariste," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(2), pages 3-18.
    3. Eduard Marinov, 2017. "The 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 117-159.
    4. Moseley, Alice & Stoker, Gerry, 2013. "Nudging citizens? Prospects and pitfalls confronting a new heuristic," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 4-10.
    5. Tirole, Jean, 2002. "Rational irrationality: Some economics of self-management," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 633-655, May.
    6. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    7. Jonathan D. Cohen, 2005. "The Vulcanization of the Human Brain: A Neural Perspective on Interactions Between Cognition and Emotion," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 3-24, Fall.
    8. Schilirò, Daniele & Graziano, Mario, 2011. "Scelte e razionalità nei modelli economici: un'analisi multidisciplinare [Choices and rationality in economic models: a multidisciplinary analysis]," MPRA Paper 31910, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Meyer, Andrew G., 2015. "The impacts of elicitation mechanism and reward size on estimated rates of time preference," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 132-148.
    10. Saito, Hiroharu, 2022. "Loss aversion for the value of voting rights: WTA/WTP ratios for a ballot," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    11. Kathryn Graddy & Lara Loewenstein & Jianping Mei & Mike Moses & Rachel A. J. Pownall, 2023. "Empirical evidence of anchoring and loss aversion from art auctions," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 47(2), pages 279-301, June.
    12. Baker, Malcolm & Coval, Joshua & Stein, Jeremy C., 2007. "Corporate financing decisions when investors take the path of least resistance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 266-298, May.
    13. Anbarci, Nejat & Arin, K. Peren & Kuhlenkasper, Torben & Zenker, Christina, 2018. "Revisiting loss aversion: Evidence from professional tennis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 1-18.
    14. Morrison, Gwendolyn C., 2000. "WTP and WTA in repeated trial experiments: Learning or leading?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 57-72, February.
    15. Ehrhart, Karl-Martin & Ott, Marion & Abele, Susanne, 2015. "Auction fever: Rising revenue in second-price auction formats," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 206-227.
    16. Ramiah, Vikash & Xu, Xiaoming & Moosa, Imad A., 2015. "Neoclassical finance, behavioral finance and noise traders: A review and assessment of the literature," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 89-100.
    17. Martin Binder & Leonhard K. Lades, 2015. "Autonomy-Enhancing Paternalism," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(1), pages 3-27, February.
    18. Maria Alessandra Antonelli & Valeria De Bonis & Angelo Castaldo & Alessandrao Gandolfo, 2022. "Sin goods taxation: an encompassing model," Public Finance Research Papers 52, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    19. Morvinski, Coby & Shani, Yaniv, 2022. "Misaligned mindsets between borrowers and lenders of small interpersonal loans," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    20. Ricardo Sabbadini, 2018. "Loss Aversion and Search for Yield in Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2018_16, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6911. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.