Historians of economic thought are paying greater attention to issues of social ontology (that is, to the assumptions that economists make about the nature of social reality). In this paper, we contribute to this burgeoning literature by exploring the hitherto neglected way in which James...

In Fairness versus Welfare (2003), Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell provide a manifesto for normative law and economics. Therein, they spell out the foundations for contemporary law and economics based on a Paretian consequentialist welfarism and a preferentialist account of welfare. We argue in...