Аннотация секции

Political decision-making is always a thrilling act of balancing between freedom and safety concerns. Since behavioral economists discovered the wonderworking force of nudge, it became an issue for policymakers how to put it to good use. The knowledge about limits of human rationality made it even harder to define the limits of appropriate state intervention. On the one hand, the policymakers should take responsibility for helping citizens choose what is good for them when it comes to health and money. On the other hand, what looks like a revelation for economists was never a secret for politics: the rationality of policymakers is bounded as well. The idea of libertarian paternalism, suggested by R. Thaler and C. Sunstein in 2003, showed how to implement nudging in public policy — but it was just the start.

Though numerous findings of behavioral economics have been adopted recently by the private sector, behavioral political economy is still searching for its trajectories. While the knowledge about human traits and aspirations is expanding continuously, it still needs guidance from the traditional political economy, — and, hopefully, vice versa.