The Evolutionary Force of Behavioral Economics in Law

Abstract This paper explores the interaction, rather than the competition, among incentivist (or rationalist), behavioral, and evolutionary explanations of legal rules and approaches to problems of public policy. It suggests that behavioral economics can play an important role in influencing people where an incentive-based approach to affecting behavior was tried first and failed on a subset of the targeted group. The discussion ranges across examples including savings rates, the performance of educational institutions, health care, rescue, and even university admissions to explore a range of behavioral tools, with a focus on endowment effects and N-of-1 thinking, in order to bring out the clash among – and the teamwork that is possible with – these three approaches.