公共政策的行为途径:通向一个“心理国家”?

Behavioral Approach to Public Policy: Building a “Psychological State”?

20世纪70年代后,行为经济学迅速发展,提出了大量与理性决策模式相违背的认知和行为特点,如"双曲贴现"、"冷热情感鸿沟"、"乐观主义偏差"、"认知吝啬者"、"偏好逆转"和"安于现状偏差"等。在行为经济学家看来,公共政策的调整范围,不仅有市场失败,还有"行为失败",需要政府以新的"家长主义"方式施以关爱之手,帮助他们做出正确决策。基于非对称家长主义和自由家长主义的政策设计,是目前行为经济学应用于政策实践领域的两种主流途径,其具体政策工具包括化繁为简、警示、默认、社会规范等。行为经济学已经在社会福利、环境保护、消费者权益保护等政策领域显露身手,形成了可以称为政策设计的"行为透视"途径,在英国、美国、澳大利亚、新加坡等国被广泛实践,建设"心理国家"成为新公共管理运动之后的新一波改革浪潮。公共决策寻求行为经济学、行为科学和心理学的支持,是政策科学中的社会性回归和"人"的回归。在我国,结合国情和意识形态基础,建立具有中国特色的"行为透视"与"心理国家"模式,具有现实上的需要,值得学界进一步思考与探讨。

Since the 1970s, as a relatively new field of economics, behavioral economics is developing fast, which combines economics with psychology to better understand human nature, such as hyperbolic discounting, hot-to-cold empathy gap, optimism bias, cognitive miser, reversed preference, and readiness for status quo. Integrating behavioral economics into public policy results in a new set of principles for both understanding the role of government and informing policy design. Since individuals cannot free themselves from behavioral errors, it would be necessary for the government to give them a helping hand in the manner of new paternalism. Policy design based on asymmetric paternalism and libertarian paternalism is the main practice of behavioral economics in the field of social welfare, environment protection, customer protection, etc. The behavioral insight of public policy had been widely using in the developed countries, such as UK, U. S. , Austria, Singapore, and also prompted a wave of ＂psychological state＂. Public decision-making seeks the support of behavioral economics, behavioral science and psychology, which is the social return in policy science and the return of ＂peo- ple＂. In China, to construct the ＂behavior insight＂ and ＂psychological state＂ model based on the national conditions and ideological basis, is of practical need, and it is worth further thinking and discussion in the academic circle.