How Much Liberty Should We Have? Citizens versus Experts on Regulating Externalities and Internalities
Abstract
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
Publisher
University of Gothenburg
Other description
JEL-classification: D04, D62, D91, Q58
Collections
View/ Open
Date
2024-01Author
Carlsson, Fredrik
Johansson-Stenman, Olof
Kataria, Mitesh
Keywords
externalities
internalities
paternalism
experts
citizens
Publication type
report
ISSN
1403-2465
Series/Report no.
Working Papers in Economics
841
Language
eng