The paper provides a critical appraisal of the normative program of behavioral economics known as new paternalism. Part II of the paper discusses main empirical and conceptual drawbacks of this approach and provides arguments for the alternative non-welfarist normative tradition based on the...

The paper provides a critical appraisal of the normative program of behavioral economics known as new paternalism. Part I of the paper explores its theoretical foundations, describes major behavioral anomalies associated with bounded rationality of economic agents, discusses normative principles...