The Subtlety of Optimal Paternalism in a Population with Bounded Rationality
Clicks: 86
ID: 282668
2024
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This
article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score —
reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
Reader Engagement
Emerging Content
25.5
/100
86 views
36 readers
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
EmergingRanked #228 of 803 articles by views in arXiv
Most read
Least read
Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 803 in total.
Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet mintedCreate a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.
5
SUSD
one-off · no wallet required
Abstract
We consider a utilitarian planner with the power to design a discrete choice
set for a heterogeneous population with bounded rationality. We find that
optimal paternalism is subtle. The policy that most effectively constrains or
influences choices depends on the preference distribution of the population and
on the choice probabilities conditional on preferences that measure the
suboptimality of behavior. We first consider the planning problem in
abstraction. We next examine policy choice when individuals measure utility
with additive random error and maximize mismeasured rather than actual utility.
We then analyze a class of problems of binary treatment choice under
uncertainty. Here we suppose that a planner can mandate a treatment conditional
on publicly observed personal covariates or can decentralize decision making,
enabling persons to choose their own treatments. Bounded rationality may take
the form of deviations between subjective personal beliefs and objective
probabilities of uncertain outcomes. We apply our analysis to clinical decision
making in medicine. Having documented that optimization of paternalism requires
the planner to possess extensive knowledge that is rarely available, we address
the difficult problem of paternalistic policy choice when the planner is
boundedly rational.
| Reference Key |
sheshinski2024the
Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using
SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
|
|---|---|
| Authors | Charles F. Manski; Eytan Sheshinski |
| Journal | arXiv |
| Year | 2024 |
| DOI |
DOI not found
|
| URL | |
| Keywords |
Citations
No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.