How Much Liberty Should We Have? Citizens versus Experts on Regulating Externalities and Internalities

• Based on a tailor-made survey, we find that experts – academics and civil servants – are much more willing than citizens in Sweden to accept liberty-reducing regulations. Moreover, both citizens and experts are more supportive of regulating negative internalities (in terms of health) than negative externalities (in terms of climate change). While less liberty-reducing policy instruments receive more support, around 20 percent of citizens and experts support very intrusive measures such as non-transferable individual quotas for air travel and unhealthy foods. Both experts and citizens prefer encouraging to discouraging information provision, while experts are more positive than citizens to tax instruments

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

externalities

internalities

paternalism

experts

citizens

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

ovr (subject category)