2022 Exeter Prize to Sandro Ambuehl, Douglas Bernheim, and Axel Ockenfels

 Here's an announcement in an email from the Economic Science Association (ESA):

"We are happy to announce the winners of the 2022 Exeter Prize for the best paper published in the previous calendar year in a peer-reviewed journal in the fields of Experimental Economics, Behavioural Economics and Decision Theory.

The winners are Sandro Ambuehl (University of Zurich), Douglas Bernheim (Stanford University), and Axel Ockenfels (University of Cologne) for their paper “What motivates paternalism? An experimental study”, published in The American Economic Review. 

There is a growing interest in how “choice architects” design choices for others.  This paper provides new insights about how and why people in the role of a choice architect limit the decisions of others.  Ambuehl, Bernheim and Ockenfels use the tools of experimental economics to study how subjects help other subjects (“choosers”) to be more patient in tempting intertemporal choices (in which a small, immediate outcome is pitted against a large, delayed outcome).  A key result is that choice architects do act to restrict the choice set of choosers to help them avoid temptation.  A key strength the paper is offering insight into the motivations behind this decision.  The paper proposes and tests two possible motivations:  1) A “mistakes-projective paternalism” in which the choice architect assumes others share his/her susceptibilities to temptations and uses choice sets to minimize temptations and 2) an “ideals-projective paternalism” in which the choice architect assumes others follow his/her values and limit the choice set to those valued outcomes.  The results provide clear evidence for the latter motivation.  The paper provides evidence about additional beliefs and motivations.  Choice architects believe that they are improving the welfare of choosers and they underestimate how many people they are affecting with their restrictions.  Finally, the behavior of choice architects in the laboratory predicts support for real-world paternalistic policies (regarding, for example, taxes on alcohol and tobacco) and the motivation to make choices harder is consistent with “ideals-projective paternalism.”

The winning paper was selected by the panel of Rick Larrick (Duke University), Muriel Niederle (Stanford University), and Tomasz Strzalecki (Harvard University)."