From Homo Economicus to Homo Psychologicus: the Paretian Foundations of Behavioural Paternalism - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Œconomia - History/Methodology/Philosophy Année : 2016

From Homo Economicus to Homo Psychologicus: the Paretian Foundations of Behavioural Paternalism

Guilhem Lecouteux

Résumé

Behavioural paternalism aims at designing public policies helping boundedly rational individuals to satisfy their own preferences. It is assumed that (i) individuals have true preferences which would determine their choices if they were rational, (ii) the satisfaction of those preferences constitutes the normative criterion, and (iii) it is possible to elicit those preferences from the social planner standpoint. I argue that behavioural paternalism implicitly endorses Pareto’s model of the Homo economicus, and highlight the methodological difficulties of those three hypotheses. My main argument is that behavioural paternalists cannot define unambiguously what would be the preferences of an ideally rational agent.

Dates et versions

halshs-01426738 , version 1 (04-01-2017)

Identifiants

Citer

Guilhem Lecouteux. From Homo Economicus to Homo Psychologicus: the Paretian Foundations of Behavioural Paternalism. Œconomia - History/Methodology/Philosophy, 2016, Psychology and Economics in Historical Perspective, 6 (2), pp.175-200. ⟨10.4000/oeconomia.2324⟩. ⟨halshs-01426738⟩
214 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More