En EconoLog, uno de sus autores, Bryan Caplan, nos anuncia la publicación en 2007 de su libro The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton University Press). En el post explica las propuestas que defiende en el libro (y que ya han sido comentadas por Tyler Cowen). En particular
The position I defend in my book is the weaker one that people make more and larger mistakes when the stakes are small. But arguing with Tyler about this for a few years definitely helped me to refine my position. What I realized in the end:
1. In the short-run, raising the stakes sometimes does cognitively backfire. Think about "stressing out" on an important exam. In the long-run, however, Tyler's just wrong. High stakes lead to more studying, which leads to better performance. In markets, where people suffer from their own mistakes, they try to learn, and are partly successful. In religion and politics, where mistakes have little or no consequence for the believer, people avoid learning, and stay in the dark.…
Por tanto, los mercados (racionales) “obligan” a la gente a aprender para mejorar sus resultados mientras que en la religión o la política, que no dependen de los resultados obtenidos, ese incentivo desaparece y surgen los actores irracionales. Seguro que estas ideas levantarán polémica (sobre todo entre políticos, creyentes y religiosos).
