Sunday, February 27, 2011

Update on Draft 1.4

Another week, another case of not putting in as much time as hoped/planned on the vice paper. Nevertheless, I do have the beginnings of a draft on the licensing section, and an even more rudimentary start to self-exclusion. I didn't make it very far into the Committee of Fifty's 1905 Summary book, alas, and the Portuguese section remains untouched. So for next week, my goals are: (1) brush up the licensing section; (2) complete a draft of the self-exclusion section; (3) put down some preliminary discussion of Portugal; and (4) read a lot more of the Committee of Fifty's book.

Writing is research, as the cliche' has it, so I am OK with the emphasis so far on gathering, digesting, and organizing information. But I am approaching a time when I will want to think more carefully about applying economic theory -- or rather, behavioral economics choice theory -- to regulatory options involving licensing and exclusion. Self-exclusion or self-limiting, for instance, would seem to work well for people who are sophisticated about their future self-control shortcomings. Naive vice consumers, though, will not recognize their future unreliability, so a voluntary exclusion will not have much appeal, at least until serious damage has occurred. (Comparisons between naive and sophisticated consumers are a feature of many contributions to behavioral economics -- I associate the terminology with papers by Matthew Rabin and Ted O'Donoghue.) So maybe I can do some more gathering as opposed to thinking, by collecting the main contributions to behavioral decision theory.

The Draft Two deadline, March 15, is looming. This is the first "real" deadline, because there was no intention that Draft One would be anywhere near complete. My hope is that I will indeed have a complete draft by the deadline -- but I suspect that it will be rambling, unfocused, and possibly pointless. But that is why there are three more drafts planned.

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