Yes you can make the pagefile smaller without side effects. When I was using a pagefile I would set mine to 512MB or 1GB. And then if the system ever needed more memory, it would automatically resize the file.
Some people don't like the idea but I have turned off my pagefile. They will post several reasons why its not a good idea. Reasons that make no sense to me. But I'm not gonna bash them for those reasons, but I have ran without a pagefile way for a few years on 8GB and no issues. Without a pagefile the system would simply not load applications and possibly crash other application in memory, if it ever did run low.
Long story short, I think we all can agree making the pagefile smaller is acceptable. With 16GB memory, I'd probably set the pagefile to 2GB. That is if I was going to use one.