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...