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The Scope and Limits of Preference Sovereignty

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  • Cowen, Tyler

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Cowen, Tyler, 1993. "The Scope and Limits of Preference Sovereignty," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 253-269, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:ecnphi:v:9:y:1993:i:02:p:253-269_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Wenstop, Fred & Magnus, Per, 2001. "Value focused rationality in AIDS policy," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 57-72, July.
    2. Cyril Hédoin, 2017. "Normative economics and paternalism: the problem with the preference-satisfaction account of welfare," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 286-310, September.
    3. Mohr, Ernst, 1995. "Greenhouse policy persuasion: towards a positive theory of discounting the climate future," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 235-245, December.
    4. O'Hara, Sabine U. & Stagl, Sigrid, 2002. "Endogenous preferences and sustainable development," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 511-527.
    5. Elodie Brahic & Valérie Clément & Nathalie Moureau & Marion Vidal, 2008. "A la recherche des Merit Goods," Working Papers 08-08, LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier, revised Jun 2008.
    6. Hoberg, Nikolai & Strunz, Sebastian, 2018. "When Individual Preferences Defy Sustainability — Can Merit Good Arguments Close the Gap?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 286-293.
    7. Christian Schubert & Andreas Chai, 2012. "Sustainable Consumption and Consumer Sovereignty," Papers on Economics and Evolution 2012-14, Philipps University Marburg, Department of Geography.
    8. Sibani, Paolo & Andersson, Jan-Olov, 1994. "Excitation morphology of short range Ising spin glasses," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 206(1), pages 1-12.
    9. Tomer, John F., 1996. "Good habits and bad habits: A new age socio-economic model of preference formation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 619-638.
    10. Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, 2008. "Toward a Libertarian Reconstruction of Neoclassical Welfare Theory," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 24(Fall 2008), pages 119-130.
    11. Berrens, Robert P. & Polasky, Stephen, 1995. "The Paretian Liberal Paradox and ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 45-56, July.

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