Freedom of Contract and Paternalism

Recent regulatory ideas like libertarian paternalism and nudge indicate how policy discourse over sin taxes, consumer credits, cooling-off periods, pension schemes and other domains of life increasingly relies on terminology, analytical methods and empirical findings of behavioral economics. Freedom of Contract and Paternalism offers a thorough and critical analysis of the philosophical foundations and methodological problems of an economic approach to paternalism. Looking at contract regulation in various jurisdictions, Cserne discusses whether and how economic analysis, behavioral or otherwise, can explain and justify paternalism, the limitation of freedom of choice for the supposed benefit of those constrained.

Peter Cserne is a senior lecturer in Law at the University of Hull. A lawyer and economist by training, he has published widely on legal theory, economic analysis of law, and contracts. He is the founder and convener of MetaLawEcon, an international academic network for research on the foundations of economic analysis of law.