ABSTRACT
This chapter states that through the transportation of the results of control trials to policy contexts, behavioural economics has spread a normative approach to justify government interventions that can help people make rational decisions. As this chapter argues, the analysis of the Libertarian Paternalism proposal, advocated by Thaler and Sunstein, raises some interrelated questions: how convincing is the adoption of methodological individualism to justify government interventions? How reliable are the empirical data underlying normative conclusions?
Despite the non-uniformity of a population, the normative recommendations of behavioural economics are applicable by default to the entire society. This applicability is justified by the principles of Libertarian Paternalism where government interventions impose almost no costs on rational individuals and preserve their freedom of choice.
Indeed, one of the main concerns is whether economic policy should be built upon control trials and laboratory experiments. In this respect, a key question is: what implicit issues are behind the evidence-based behavioural interventions aimed at rational decision making? This chapter states that behavioural economics has not abandoned the Cartesian narrative and the norms of rationality that have been rejected by Nietzsche and Foucault, among others, in the last centuries. Relying on Foucault´s analysis of the role of normalization in modern societies, this chapter addresses that nudges are at heart of the techniques of modern power.
