Evolving Preferences andPolicy Advice in Democratic Society

Beyond its explanatory ambitions as positive science, economics has always had its normativeor applied branch that aims at providing advice about how man’s socio-economic conditionmight be improved. Under the name welfare economics the discipline’s normative branch hasbeen formalized, in the spirit of Benthamite utilitarianism, as an attempt to generalize thenotion of rational, maximizing choice from the individual to the societal level by aggregatingindividual preferences into a compound measure of social welfare. The theoreticalconsistency and practical applicability of this aggregationist approach has long been thesubject of controversy, and in response to objections welfare economics underwent variousmodifications and reformulations.[...]

MoreLess

Year of publication:	2009
Authors:	Vanberg, Viktor
Institutions:	Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften
Subject:	Individualismus \| individualism \| Entwicklung \| Präferenz \| preference \| Wohlfahrt \| Welfarism \| Demokratie

1. Introduction
2. Evolving Preferences, Social Welfare and Normative Individualism
3. Welfare Economics, Constitutional Economics and Policy Advice
4. C.C. von Weizsäcker’s Welfare Economics of Endogenous Preferences
5. Robert Sugden: Preference Instability and Consumer Sovereignty
6. Ulrich Witt’s More Objective Utilitarian Approach
7. Conclusion
References

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009022150