Many individuals have empathetic feelings towards animals but frequently consume meat. We investigate this "meat paradox" using insights from the literature on motivated reasoning in moral dilemmata. We develop a model where individuals form self-serving beliefs about the suffering of animals...

Within a general equilibrium model, this paper identifies a novel animal welfare externality that occurs if the private animal friendliness in a market economy falls short of the social animal friendliness used by the social planner when determining the efficient allocation. The animal welfare...

Industry stakeholder requests for improved animal welfare practices in German meat production have steadily increased in recent years. A transformation of German animal husbandry systems would almost certainly result in higher production costs. Against this background, producers and the meat...