TOTM

A “Plain Vanilla” Proposal for Behavioral Law and Economics

I’ve been, for some time, a behavioral law and economics skeptic.  Sometimes this position is confused with skepticism about behavioral economics, as in — believing that behavioral economics itself offers nothing useful to economic science or is illegitimate in some way.   That’s not true.  Now, I have some qualms about the explanatory power of some of the behavioral models as well — but the primary critique (in my view) has always been the threat that behavioral economics will be used as the intellectual cover for regulation judged by the preferences of the regulators rather than rigorous economic analysis of any sort.

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