Freedom of Contract and Paternalism: Prospects and Limits of an Economic Approach (Perspectives from Social Economics)

Recent regulatory ideas like libertarian paternalism and nudge indicate how policy discourse over sin taxes, consumer credits, cooling-off periods, pension schemes and other domains of life increasingly relies on terminology, analytical methods and empirical findings of behavioral economics. Freedom of Contract and Paternalism offers a thorough and critical analysis of the philosophical foundations and methodological problems of an economic approach to paternalism. Looking at contract regulation in various jurisdictions, Cserne discusses whether and how economic analysis, behavioral or otherwise, can explain and justify paternalism, the limitation of freedom of choice for the supposed benefit of those constrained.