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In the work of von Mises and Rothbard one can find a case for a strong presumption against traditional coercive paternalist policies. Coercion is generally undesirable, and legislators and bureaucrats cannot know what is best for each agent. Not all of the traditional case against paternalism applies to the new libertarian paternalism espoused by behavioral economists and popularized in Sunstein’s and Thaler’s Nudge. There is no way to rule out the possibility that legislators sometimes know better than agents what generally benefits them, and that they can impose feasible regulations that do not limit important freedom and whose costs and risks do not outweigh their benefits. Paternalism is not a bugbear to be avoided at all costs. There’s good reason for skepticism about its virtue and feasibility but no justification for its blanket condemnation.

This chapter enters the debate of knowing if the financial regulations should be overhauled in the continuity of behavioural finance developments. The lack of precision in the behavioural finance conclusions could lead to misleading new financial regulations adoption. Furthermore, through an analysis of the literature, we show that behavioural finance hypothesis building converges to the neoclassical one's, which contradicts the idea to overhaul financial regulations. We also highlight the fact that universal heuristics and biases contribute to the financial regulations revision proposal. Finally, we analyse some of the propositions put forward by advocates of behavioural finance and the limits thereof.

Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of behavior toward those choices might not be the ones we were all taught, and still teach, and that subjective risk perceptions might not accord with expert assessments of probabilities. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the need to jettison naive notions of revealed preferences, according to which every choice by a subject expresses her objective function, as behavioral evidence forces us to confront pervasive inconsistencies and noise in a typical individual’s choice data. A principled account of errant choice must be built into models used for identification and estimation. These challenges demand close attention to the methodological claims often used to justify policy interventions. They also require, we argue, closer attention by economists to relevant contributions from cognitive science. We propose that a quantitative application of the “intentional stance” of Dennett provides a coherent, attractive and general approach to behavioral welfare economics.

What is behavioral economics? This chapter explores a mismatch between what is included in the field of behavioral economics and some of the most visible Austrian critiques of behavioral economics. While paternalism, nudging, and a focus on irrationalities and biases are a big part of modern behavioral economics, the portrayal of the field of behavioral economics as being focused predominately upon those areas leaves a swath of low-hanging fruit that would be beneficial for Austrian scholars to consume and use in their own work.

In the past decade, the effectiveness and efficiency foreign aid (Aid Industry) has generated considerable debate in both of the academic and popular press. Despite spending billions of dollars in foreign aid well over a billion people remain in extreme poverty. This paper did not intend to question the magnitude of the effort or the motives of donors or aid agencies, but rather why the aid programs have not been more effective.

Certain research in behavioral economics, pathological altruism, and emotional empathy may help provide answers. Common to these theories is the idea that well-intentioned actions or policies may cause unintended, harmful consequences to either the donors or the intended beneficiaries of these actions or policies. This paradoxical result is typically due to the altruist’s inability to properly analyze the situation for a variety of reasons. The Aid Industry may be particularly susceptible to these behavioral biases and thus is likely to suffer to some extent from unintended adverse consequences.

This paper focused on ethical considerations at the microlevel, that is, the paper considered the impact of aid on individual’s economic utility and human dignity as opposed to macromeasures such as gross domestic product. Our purpose was to examine how behavioral theories can improve foreign aid efficiency and effectiveness. Using specific examples and considering ethical arguments based on utility and rights theories, we illustrated how these behavioral theories help explain the Aid Industry’s suboptimal results.

In the United States, welfare-to-work workers are under scrutiny from everyone and must defend the program if they want to defend themselves as good workers and good people. I build on past research that has examined how workers manage their emotions to cope with dilemmas in their jobs in a number of settings including hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, and airplanes.

In this chapter, I draw on data from an in-depth case study of a rural North Carolina (USA) welfare office using data primarily from observations and interviews with 19 welfare-to-work workers.

Within this highly constrained and contradictory work environment, workers recreate and redefine themselves as good workers and good people while simultaneously punishing program participants. To achieve this difficult task, workers manage their emotions through two key strategies, using institutionalized rhetoric and tough love paternalism, to justify their actions toward participants.

I add to the existing literature by examining how welfare-to-work workers cope with the emotional and moral dilemmas of their jobs.

George Loewenstein, a prominent behavioral economist, recalls thatIn 1994, when Thaler, Camerer, Rabin, Prelec and I spent the year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, we had a meeting to make a kind of final decision about what to call what we were doing. Remarkably, at that time, the name behavioral economics was not yet well established. I actually advocated “psychological economics,” and Thaler was strong on behavioral economics. I'm kind of glad that he prevailed; I think it's a better, catchier, label, although it creates confusion due to association with Behaviorism. (G. Loewenstein, personal email to author, June 16, 2008)

Purpose: The purpose of the chapter is to study the process of evolution of modern business systems, to distinguish its main stages, and to determine the peculiarities of the modern stage of this process. For compiling a fuller dynamic model of evolution of modern business systems, this research is performed by the example of modern Russia – which is one of the most vivid representatives of countries with transitional (forming) economy and which is thus peculiar for very intensive transformation processes in business as compared to the countries that implement the concept of market economy.

Methodology: The methodology of the research is based on the method of logical analysis (analysis of causal connections) and the method of comparative historical analysis, with the help of which regularities of development of modern business systems are distinguished and stages of their evolution are determined. The method of formalization is used for graphic presentation of genesis of modern business systems.

Conclusions: As a result, four stages of evolution of modern business systems are distinguished: paternalism (1991–1997), commercialization (1998–2007), balancing (2008–2017), and technologization (since 2018). Each of the distinguished stages has its peculiarities, and the following regularities and tendencies of development of modern business systems are observed in the process of their evolution: increase of competition in business environment, increase of regulation of business from the state and society, and growth of size of business systems, which leads to complication of their structure, with increase of flexibility of business culture. Sufficiency of adaptation means with modern business systems is substantiated.

Originality/value: The determined outlines of the current stage of evolution of modern business systems allow compiling two following forecast scenarios of their further development, oriented at the period until 2025: scenario of well-balanced development of modern business systems and scenario of increase of disproportions in development of modern business systems. Implementation of these scenarios is possible in any socioeconomic system. Depending on strategic goals and priorities, each system may select the most optimal scenario and conduct the corresponding management of development of modern business systems.

In this chapter, I develop a model concerning effects of paternalistic organizational control on group creativity. I develop the model on the basis of a diverse set of literatures, including research on individual and group creativity, paternalistic leadership, self-systems theory, and its implications for impact of choice on intrinsic motivation. According to this model, (a) paternalistic organizational control enhances work group creativity for groups in the East; (b) the impact of paternalistic organizational control on group creativity is mediated by groups’ intrinsic motivation; and (c) national culture (i.e., East versus West) moderates the relationship between organizational control and group intrinsic motivation (and subsequently, group creativity) in such a way that organizational control would enhance intrinsic motivation (and creativity) for groups in the East, but it would inhibit intrinsic motivation (and creativity) for groups in the West.