Behavioral Economics and Public Policy: A Pragmatic Perspective
从实用主义角度探讨行为经济学如何通过提供新政策工具、改进政策效果预测和生成福利含义来贡献于公共政策，并以退休储蓄、劳动供给和邻里选择为例说明。
The debate about behavioral economics–the incorporation of insights from psychology into economics–is often framed as a question about the foundational assumptions of economic models. This paper presents a more pragmatic perspective on behavioral economics that focuses on its value for improving empirical predictions and policy decisions. I discuss three ways in which behavioral economics can contribute to public policy: by offering new policy tools, improving predictions about the effects of existing policies, and generating new welfare implications. I illustrate these contributions using applications to retirement savings, labor supply, and neighborhood choice. Behavioral models provide new tools to change behaviors such as savings rates and new counterfactuals to estimate the effects of policies such as income taxation. Behavioral models also provide new prescriptions for optimal policy that can be characterized in a non-paternalistic manner using methods analogous to those in neoclassical models. Model uncertainty does not justify using the neoclassical model; instead, it can provide a new rationale for using behavioral nudges. I conclude that incorporating behavioral features to the extent they help answer core economic questions may be more productive than viewing behavioral economics as a separate subfield that challenges the assumptions of neoclassical models.