This paper discusses the standard welfare economics assumption anthropocentric welfarism, i.e. that only human well-being counts intrinsically. New survey evidence from a representative sample in Sweden is presented, indicating that anthropocentrism is strongly rejected, on average. However,...

Welfare economics relies on consequentialism. Whether a public action is good or bad is then determined by the consequences for people, rather than for example by the extent to which it infringes on others’ rights. Yet, many philosophers have questioned this assumption. The present note...

This paper analyses normative implications of relaxing the conventional welfare economics assumptions anthropocentrism and welfarism, i.e. that only human well-being counts intrinsically, combined with various types of non-selfish individual preferences. Social decision rules are derived for the...

This paper analyzes the standard welfare economics assumption of anthropocentric welfarism, i.e., that only human well-being counts intrinsically. Alternatives where animal welfare matters intrinsically are explored theoretically, based on moral philosophical literature, and empirically where...

We propose a mechanism to implement the distributional goal of "specific egalitarianism", or that allocation of a good be independent of income, but increasing in relative strength of preference or need. Governments could offer the good at multiple "outlets" that charge different money and time...

We propose an allocation mechanism for publicly providing a private good such that the final allocation is simultaneously independent of income and increasing in strength of preference or need. The "pay or wait" mechanism consists of offering the good for sale at two outlets. The 'queuing'...

We test the hypothesis that people conform to certain social norms, i.e. that some individuals may be willing to pay a higher price premium for green products the more widespread green consumerism is in society. To investigate consumer preferences for environmentally friendly products, we...

We show that peer sanctioning increases cooperation in public goods experiments more in unequally endowed groups than in equally endowed groups. Punishment results in a redistribution of wealth from high to low endowment players within groups. <p>

Subjective wellbeing (SWB) is increasingly used as a way to measure individual wellbeing. Interpreted as "experienced utility", it has been compared to "decision utility" using specific experiments (Kahneman et al., 1997) or stated preferences(Benjamin et al. 2012). We suggest here an original...