Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:43:08.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Scope and Limits of Preference Sovereignty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

Tyler Cowen
Tyler Cowen
Affiliation:
George Mason University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Economists use tastes as a source of information about personal welfare and judge the effects of policies upon preference satisfaction; neoclassical welfare economics is the analytical embodiment of this preference sovereignty norm. For an initial distribution of wealth, the welfare-maximizing outcome is the one that exhausts all possible gains from trade. Gains from trade are defined relative to fixed ordinal preferences. This analytical apparatus consists of both the Pareto principle, which implies that externality-free voluntary trades increase welfare, and applied costbenefit analysis, which attempts to weight costs and benefits when evaluating policies that are not Pareto improvements.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , October 1993 , pp. 253 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allais, Maurice. 1947. Economie et Interet. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.Google Scholar
Brandt, Richard. 1979. A Theory of the Good and the Right. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Braybrooke, David. 1987. Meeting Needs. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, John. 1985. “The Welfare Economics of the Future: A Review of Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit.” Social Choice and Welfare 2:221–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, John. 1989. “Should Social Preferences be Consistent?” Economics and Philosophy 5:7–17.Google Scholar
Chipman, John S., and Moore., James C. 1978. “The New Welfare Economics 1939–1974.” International Economic Review 19:547–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowen, Tyler. 1989a. “Are All Tastes Constant and Identical?: A Critique of Stigler and Becker.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. 01:127–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowen, Tyler. 1989b. “Normative Population Theory.” Social Choice and Welfare 6:33–43.Google Scholar
Cowen, Tyler. 1990. “Distribution in Fixed and Variable Number Problems.” Social Choice and Welfare 7:47–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowen, Tyler. 1991a. “What a Non-Paretian Welfare Economics Would Have to Look Like.” In Hermeneutics and Economics, edited by Lavoie, Donald C., pp. 285–98. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cowen, Tyler. 1991b. “Self-Liberation Versus Self-Constraint.” Ethics 101:360–73.Google Scholar
Cowen, Tyler, and Derek, Parfit. 1992. “Against the Social Discount Rate.” In Philosophy, Politics, and Society, 6th series, edited by P., Laslett and J., Fishkin. pp. 144–61. New Haven, Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dixit, Avinash, and Victor, Norman. 1978. “Advertising and Welfare.” Bell Journal of Economics 9(1):1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald M. 1980. “Is Wealth a Value?” Journal of Legal Studies 9:191–226.Google Scholar
Earl, Peter E. 1990. “Economics and Psychology: A Survey.” Economic Journal 100:718–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1979. Ulysses and the Sirens. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1982. “Sour Grapes – Utilitarianism and the Genesis of Wants.” In Utilitarianism and Beyond, edited by A., Sen and B., Williams, pp. 219–38. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gibbard, Allan. 1986. “Interpersonal Comparisons: Preference, Good, and the Intrinsic Reward of a Life.” In Foundations of Social Choice Theory, edited by J., Elster and A., Hylland, pp. 165–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gibbard, Allan. 1990. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glover, Jonathan. 1977. Causing Death and Saving Lives. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Grether, David M., and Plott, Charles R.. 1979. “Economic Theory of Choice and the Preference Reversal Phenomenon.” American Economic Review 69:623–38.Google Scholar
Griffin, Robert. 1986. Weil-Being. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hammond, Peter. 1983. “Ex-Post Optimality as a Dynamically Consistent Objective for Collective Choice Under Uncertainty.” In Social Choice and Welfare, edited by P., Pattanaik and M., Salles, pp. 175–205. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Harsanyi, John. 1953–1954. “Welfare Economics of Variable Tastes.” Review of Economic Studies 21:204–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslett, D. W. 1990. “What is Utility?” Economics and Philosophy 6:65–94.Google Scholar
Hause, John C. 1975. “The Theory of Welfare Cost Measurement.” Journal of Political Economy 83:1145–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Head, John. 1969. “Merit Goods Revisited.” Finanzarchiv 28:214–25.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, Richard. 1974. “Preference Among Preferences.” Journal of Philosophy. 71:377–91.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos, Tversky. 1979. “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk.” Econometrica 47:263–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Paul, Slovic, and Amos, Tversky. 1982. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kavka, Gregory S. 1991. “Is Individual Choice Less Problematic Than Collective Choice?” Economics and Philosophy 7:143–65.Google Scholar
Knight, Frank H. 1936. The Ethics of Competition. New York: Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Kunreuther, Howard, Ralph, Ginsberg, L., Miller, Phillip, Sagi, Paul, Slovic, Borkan, B., and N., Katz. 1978. Disaster Insurance Protection: Public Policy Lessons. John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Little, I. M. D. 1957. A Critique of Welfare Economics. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Luria, A. R. 1968. The Mind of a Mnemonist. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
McPherson, Michael. 1982. “Mill's Moral Theory and the Problem of Preference Change.” Ethics 92:252–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinvaud, Edmond. 1972. Lectures on Microeconomic Theory. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Marshall, John M. 1989. “Welfare Analysis Without Expected Utility.” Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, Working Paper #23–89.Google Scholar
Musgrave, Richard. 1959. Theory of Public Finance. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Ng, Y.-K. 1981. “Welfarism: A Defence Against Sen's Attack.” Economic Journal 91:527–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ng, Y.-K.. 1989. “Individual Irrationality and Social Welfare.” Social Choice and Welfare 6:87–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Penz, G. Peter. 1986. Consumer Sovereignty and Human Interests. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollak, Robert. 1978. “Endogenous Tastes in Demand and Welfare Analysis.” American Economic Review 68:374–79.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard. 1981. “The Ethical and Political Basis of Wealth Maximization.” In The Economics of justice, by Richard, Posner, pp. 88–115. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Railton, Peter. 1986. “Moral Realism.” The Philosophical Review 2:163–207.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, Lionel. 1984 (first ed. 1932) An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. New York: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagoff, Mark. 1986. “Values and Preferences.” Ethics 96:301–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, Paul. 1950. “The Evaluation of Real National Income.” Oxford Economic Papers 1:1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schelling, Thomas. 1984. Choice and Consequence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Scitovsky, Tibor. 1941. “A Note on Welfare Propositions in Economics.” Review of Economic Studies 9:77–88.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1973. “Behaviour and the Concept of Preference.” Economica 40:241–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1979. “Personal Utilities and Public Judgements: Or What's Wrong With Welfare Economics.” Economic Journal 89:537–58.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1982. Choice, Welfare and Measurement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael, David, Lewis, and Mark, Johnston. 1989. “Dispositional Theories of Value.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 63:113–37.Google Scholar
Stigler, George J., and Becker, Gary S.. 1977. “De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum.” American Economic Review 67(2):76–90.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein. 1964 (first ed. 1936). What Veblen Taught. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Velleman, J. David. 1988. “Brandt's Definition of‘Good.’ ” The Philosophic Review 98(3):353–71.Google Scholar
Weil, Philippe. 1990. “Nonexpected Utility in Macroeconomics.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 105:29–42.Google Scholar
Weisbrod, Burton. 1977. “Comparing Utility Functions in Efficiency Terms, or What Kinds of Utility Functions Do We Want?” American Economic Review 77:291–95.Google Scholar
von Weizsacker, C. C. 1971. “Notes on Endogenous Changes in Tastes.” Journal of Economic Theory 3:345–72.Google Scholar
Wilson, Timothy D., and Schooler, Jonathan W.. 1991. “Thinking Too Much: Introspection Can Reduce the Quality of Preferences and Decisions.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60:181–92.Google Scholar