CAREER: Intergenerational and Behavioral Issues in Public Economics

这个职业项目旨在分析代际和行为问题在公共政策的设计和分析中所起的作用。该项目有三个组成部分。第一部分研究何种类型的机构（无论是否存在）能够为子孙后代带来最优投资，并保护它们不被征用。它包括理论模型的发展，以理解如何设计财政宪法，从而在环境等代际公共产品方面产生最佳投资，并通过财政政策保护子孙后代免受征用。关键问题是：我们如何设计制度，为尚未出生的人的利益发出“声音”。我们计划通过使用过去200年的美国历史来实证检验这一理论，研究美国制度在多大程度上产生了“良好的”代际结果。这包括建立一个关于1820年至今联邦政府财政的新数据库。第二个部分发展了一个决策和福利的新模型，它使用原始的大脑结构及其运作，而不是偏好和偏好最大化。该模型结合了心理学和神经科学的重要见解，并有可能解释为什么代理人会出现储蓄不足和成瘾等自我挫败的行为。此外，对公共经济学来说最重要的是，该模型生成了定义良好的福利评估，可用于评估公共政策。这一理论将被用来提高我们对广告、储蓄政策、药物政策、健康政策和危险行为的理解。最后，该项目的第三个组成部分是公共和行为经济学的职业教育计划，其中包括在斯坦福大学建立一个行为经济学研究小组，以及编写一部新的公共经济学研究生教材。代际和行为问题是当前公共政策中一些最重要辩论的核心。代际政策问题的例子包括全球变暖、研发和艾滋病流行。这些问题很难处理，因为将从这些政策中获益最多的几代人并不是为这些政策买单的人。行为政策问题的例子包括社会保险计划的设计、犯罪和成瘾。系统的财务管理不善和成瘾物质的消费等行为挑战了标准经济分析的预测和政策处方，这些预测和政策处方预设了代理人是相当“理性的”。这项研究的基本动机是，更好地理解这些问题，将使我们能够设计更好的公共政策，最终更好的制度。

This CAREER project proposes to analyze the role that intergenerational and behavioral issues play on the design and analysis of public policy. The project has three components. The first component studies what types of institutions, existing or not, are able to generate optimal investment in future generations, and to protect them from expropriation. It includes the development of theoretical models to understand how to design fiscal constitutions that generate optimal investment in intergenerational public goods, such as the environment, and protect future generations from expropriation through fiscal policy. The key question is: How can we design institutions that give a "voice" to the interests of people who have not been born yet. We plan to test empirically this theory by using the last 200 years of American history to study the extent to which American institutions have generated "good" intergenerational outcomes. This includes the development of a new database on the finances of the Federal Government from 1820 to the present. The second component develops a new model of decision-making and welfare that uses as primitives brain structures and their operations, instead of preferences and preference maximization. The model incorporates important insights from psychology and neuro-science, and has the potential to explain why agents engage in self-defeating behaviors such as under-saving and addiction. Also, and most importantly for Public Economics, the model generates well-defined welfare evaluations that can be used to evaluate public policy. This theory will be used to improve our understanding of advertisement, savings policy, drug policy, health policy, and risky behaviors. Finally, the third component of the project is the career educational plan on Public and Behavioral Economics that includes, among others, the development of a behavioral economics research group at Stanford University, and the development of a new graduate textbook in Public Economics.Intergenerational and behavioral issues lie at the center of some of the most important current debates in public policy. Examples of intergenerational policy problems include Global Warming, R&D, and the AIDS epidemic. These problems are difficult to handle because the generations that would benefit most from these policies are not the ones paying for them. Examples of behavioral policy problems include the design of social insurance programs, crime, and addiction. Behaviors such as systematic financial mismanagement and the consumption of addictive substances challenge the predictions and the policy prescriptions of standard economic analysis, which presupposes that agents are quite "rational." The basic motivation for this research is that an improved understanding of these issues will allow us to design better public policies and ultimately better institutions.