This paper compares two alternative answers to the question, 'Who is the addressee of welfare economics?' These answers correspond with different understandings of the status of the normative conclusions of welfare economics, and have different implications for how welfare economics should be...

I defend the claim, made in a previous paper, that ‘a Humean can be a contractarian’, against the criticisms of Anthony de Jasay. Jasay makes a categorical distinction between ‘ordered anarchy’ (which he associates with Hume) and ‘social contract theory’. I argue that Hume’s...

In this paper I argue, contrary to Hartmut Kliemt, that it is possible to be both a Humean and, in James Buchanan's sense, a contractarian. Hume sees principles of justice and political allegiance not as actual or hypothetical products of explicit agreement, but as conventions that have emerged...