Political Economy with Time Inconsistent Voters

行为经济学为政府干预提供了一种“家长式”的理由。与传统的公共经济学一样，现有的行为经济学文献假设一个仁慈的政府。这项拟议研究的出发点更确切地说是，正如教科书上的公共政策分析一样，考虑当政治进程决定政策设计时会发生什么，而不是由仁慈的规划者来决定，这一点很有用。寻求选举的政客会不会利用/纵容选民的行为扭曲，远离理性？这样的行为扭曲可以归结为集体行动吗？这对政府活动的宪法范围有什么影响？这项建议主要考虑了被广泛研究的时间不一致的情况。现有文献提出了消费者/代理商受到自我控制问题影响的理论，并表明这种问题可能导致拖延(做事情太晚)、预备化(做事情太早)(O‘Donoghue-Rabin，1999年)、退休储蓄不足(Laibson等人)。这些自我控制问题也确定了承诺的需求(康复诊所、非流动性资产和代价高昂的撤资等)。这在标准经济模型的背景下是不可能出现的。该提案提出：政府政策如何应对选民的时间不一致？政府干预如何影响和回应承诺需求？作为起点，该提案假设了最简单、最标准的政治结构：两位竞选公职的候选人之间的竞争。提案的第一部分表明，时间不一致的选民的存在可能导致财政不负责任和巨额公共债务，这突显了宪法对政府债务限制的一个新原因。提案的第二部分更为抽象，它考虑了公共和私营部门之间的互动分类，以了解政治体系如何回应对个人承诺的需求。这似乎是卓有成效的，因为有必要区分公共承诺和私人承诺，例如养老金制度(和锁定401(K)账户)或禁止消费可能导致自我控制失败的物质的法律。到目前为止，该项目表明，政治进程似乎没有对承诺的需求作出有效反应，集中决策可能会削弱个人私下作出这种承诺的意愿。该项目还提出了探索政治过程与选民不完全理性之间相互作用的其他可能途径。从本质上讲，这项研究是跨学科的，因为它使用经济学和政治学的工具来研究一个政治过程，这些选民遭受偏见，而他们的研究通常是心理学领域的。这项研究的一个更广泛的影响是更好地理解选民的理性、自我控制和复杂程度如何影响政府活动的适当边界。

Behavioral economics presents a "paternalistic" rationale for government intervention. As does traditional public economics, existing behavioral economics literature assumes a benevolent government. The point of departure for the proposed research is rather to argue that, just as for textbook public policy analysis, it is useful to consider what happens when, instead of a benevolent planner, the political process determines the design of policy. Will politicians seeking election exploit/indulge the voters' behavioral distortions away from rationality? Are such behavioral distortions amenable to aggregation into collective action? What are the implications for the constitutional scope of government activity?This proposal mostly considers the widely studied case of time inconsistency. Existing literature has presented theories where consumers/agents are subject to problems of self-control, and has shown that such problems can lead to procrastination (doing things too late), preproperation (doing things too early) (O'Donoghue-Rabin 1999), insufficient savings for retirement (Laibson et al. 1998), harmful obesity and addictions (Gul-Pesendorfer 2007, O'Donoghue-Rabin 2000) and other phenomena.These self-control problems also identify a demand for commitment (rehab clinics, illiquid assets with costly withdrawal, etc.) that cannot arise in the context of standard economic models. The proposal asks: How does government policy respond to voters' time inconsistency? How does government intervention affect and respond to the demand for commitment? As a starting point the proposal assumes the simplest and most standard political structure: competition among two office-seeking candidates.The first part of the proposal suggests that the presence of time inconsistent voters may lead to fiscal irresponsibility and large public debt, highlighting a novel reason for constitutional restrictions on government debt.The second part of the proposal is more abstract and considers a taxonomy of interactions between the public and the private sector to understand how the political system responds to a demand for individual commitments. This seems fruitful because it is necessary to distinguish between public commitments, such as pension systems (and lock-in of 401(k) accounts) or laws prohibiting consumption of substances that may lead to failures of self-control, from private commitments. The project so far suggests that the political process does not seem to respond effectively to the demand for commitment and that centralized decision making may undermine an individual's willingness to supply such commitment privately. The project also suggests other possible avenues for exploration of the interaction between the political process and voters' imperfect rationality.By its nature, this research is interdisciplinary since it uses tools from economics and political science to study a political process populated by voters who suffer from biases whose study is typically the domain of psychology. One broader impact of the research is to achieve a better understanding of how the degree of voter rationality, self-control, and sophistication affects the proper boundaries for government activity.