Bill New's (1999) thoughtful paper has performed the valuable service of clarifying the meaning and the policy implications of paternalism. His careful formulation delimits the domain of justified state paternalism. Having argued successfully, in our view, for a narrow ambit, New proceeds to identify situations that justify paternalism. This comment is written in the spirit of a friendly reform...

If one accepts some paternalistic objectives, how should this shape policy? This paper addresses this issue by considering the trade-off that results when agents have superior information regarding their own situation and tastes but a paternalistic principal views agents’ tastes as as being biased. Applications include: savings behavior by hyperbolic discounting consumers, schooling choice by t...

economics has hit the mainstream in the last decade with popular books like freakonomics and the undercover economist reaching the masses. these authors have used their toolkits far beyond the narrow scope of money and finance and answered questions pertaining to anything from social policy to demographics to crime. their appeal has largely been their ability to explain that small underlying fo...

Work requirements in means-tested transfer programs have grown in importance in the U.S. and in some other countries. The theoretical literature which considers their possible optimality generally operates within a traditional welfarist framework where some function of the utility of the poor is maximized. Here we consider a case where society is paternalistic and instead has preferences over t...

this paper is aimed to review the concepts of legitimacy and its relation to effectiveness of clergy in iran . combination of religion and politics could increase interventionism in public policy and increase expectations for welfare interventionism. this phenomena could link spiritual legitimacy of clergy to its effectiveness. somewhat vast interpretation of “ the unity of religion and politic...

Bergstrom showed that a necessary condition for a Pareto optimum with non-paternalistic altruism is classification as a selfish Pareto optimum. This paper shows that Bergstrom’s result does not generalize to the benefit-cost analysis of generic changes in public goods. There may exist good projects that will be rejected by a selfish-benefit cost test, a selfish test error. Selfish test error is...

OBJECTIVE To explore the perceptions of older people with mild dementia and mild cognitive impairment, and their family carers, about falling, falls risk and the acceptability of falls prevention interventions. DESIGN Qualitative study involving thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with patient and relative dyads. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING 20 patient/ relative dyads recruited from...

Global changes in eating attitudes were examined prospectively across pregnancy and 4 months postpartum in a sample of 90 women. In addition, specific changes in dieting behavior and weight/shape satisfaction were assessed at 4 months postpartum for concurrent and retrospective time points. Measures included the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT) and weight/shape satisfaction in pregnancy and at 4 mon...

Purpose: The knowledge, attitudes and practice among inhabitants of Mto wa Mbu Division was examined to provide objective information on sparganosis infection. Hence, the study was carried out. Methods: The study was conducted among the inhabitants of Mto wa Mbu Division, Monduli District, Tanzania from January to April 2012. Inhabitants were informed about the objective of the study and invite...