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Articles 1 - 30 of 31
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social Welfare Functions And Health Policy: A New Approach, Matthew D. Adler
Social Welfare Functions And Health Policy: A New Approach, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
The social welfare function (SWF) framework converts the possible outcomes of governmental policy choice into vectors (lists) of interpersonally comparable well-being numbers, measuring the lifetime well-being of each individual in the population of interest. The SWF proper is a rule for ranking these vectors. The utilitarian SWF adds up well-being numbers. A prioritarian SWF adds up well-being numbers plugged into a strictly increasing and strictly concave transformation function. Governmental policies are conceptualized as probability distributions over well-being vectors. A recent literature applies the SWF framework to health policy. This article first provides a brief overview of the SWF framework and …
Years Of Good Life Based On Income And Health: Re-Engineering Cost-Benefit Analysis To Examine Policy Impact On Wellbeing And Distributive Justice, Richard Cookson, Owen Cotton-Barrett, Matthew D. Adler, Miqdad Asaria, Toby Ord
Years Of Good Life Based On Income And Health: Re-Engineering Cost-Benefit Analysis To Examine Policy Impact On Wellbeing And Distributive Justice, Richard Cookson, Owen Cotton-Barrett, Matthew D. Adler, Miqdad Asaria, Toby Ord
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Justice, Claims And Prioritarianism: Room For Desert?, Matthew D. Adler
Justice, Claims And Prioritarianism: Room For Desert?, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Does individual desert matter for distributive justice? Is it relevant, for purposes of justice, that the pattern of distribution of justice’s “currency” (be it well-being, resources, preference-satisfaction, capabilities, or something else) is aligned in one or another way with the pattern of individual desert?
This paper examines the nexus between desert and distributive justice through the lens of individual claims. The concept of claims (specifically “claims across outcomes”) is a fruitful way to flesh out the content of distributive justice so as to be grounded in the separateness of persons. A claim is a relation between a person and a …
Would You Choose To Be Happy? Tradeoffs Between Happiness And The Other Dimensions Of Life In A Large Population Survey, Matthew D. Adler, Paula Dolan, Georgios Kavetsos
Would You Choose To Be Happy? Tradeoffs Between Happiness And The Other Dimensions Of Life In A Large Population Survey, Matthew D. Adler, Paula Dolan, Georgios Kavetsos
Faculty Scholarship
A large literature documents the correlates and causes of subjective well-being, or happiness. But few studies have investigated whether people choose happiness. Is happiness all that people want from life, or are they willing to sacrifice it for other attributes, such as income and health? Tackling this question has largely been the preserve of philosophers. In this article, we find out just how much happiness matters to ordinary citizens. Our sample consists of nearly 13,000 members of the UK and US general populations. We ask them to choose between, and make judgments over, lives that are high (or low) in …
Equity By The Numbers: Measuring Poverty, Inequality, And Injustice, Matthew D. Adler
Equity By The Numbers: Measuring Poverty, Inequality, And Injustice, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Can we measure inequity? Can we arrive at a number or numbers capturing the extent to which a given society is equitable or inequitable? Sometimes such questions are answered with a “no”: equity is a qualitative, non-numerical consideration.
This Article offers a different perspective. The difficulty with equity measurement is not the impossibility of quantification, but the overabundance of possible metrics. There currently exist at least four families of equity-measurement frameworks, used by scholars and, to some extent, governments: inequality metrics (such as the Gini coefficient), poverty metrics, social-gradient metrics (such as the concentration index), and equity-regarding social welfare functions. …
Happiness Surveys And Public Policy: What’S The Use?, Matthew D. Adler
Happiness Surveys And Public Policy: What’S The Use?, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
This Article provides a comprehensive, critical overview of proposals to use happiness surveys for steering public policy. Happiness or “subjective well-being” surveys ask individuals to rate their present happiness, life-satisfaction, affective state, etc. A massive literature now engages in such surveys or correlates survey responses with individual attributes. And, increasingly, scholars argue for the policy relevance of happiness data: in particular, as a basis for calculating aggregates such as “gross national happiness,” or for calculating monetary equivalents for non-market goods based on coefficients in a happiness equation.
But is individual well-being equivalent to happiness? The happiness literature tends to blur …
The Pigou-Dalton Principle And The Structure Of Distributive Justice, Matthew D. Adler
The Pigou-Dalton Principle And The Structure Of Distributive Justice, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
The Pigou-Dalton (PD) principle recommends a non-leaky, non-rank-switching transfer of goods from someone with more goods to someone with less. This Article defends the PD principle as an aspect of distributive justice --- enabling the comparison of two distributions, neither completely equal, as more or less just. It shows how the PD principle flows from a particular view, adumbrated by Thomas Nagel, about the grounding of distributive justice in individuals' "claims." And it criticizes two competing frameworks for thinking about justice that less clearly support the principle: the veil-of-ignorance framework, and Larry Temkin's proposal that fairer distributions are those concerning …
Harsanyi 2.0, Matthew D. Adler
Harsanyi 2.0, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
How should we make interpersonal comparisons of well-being levels and differences? One branch of welfare economics eschews such comparisons, which are seen as impossible or unknowable; normative evaluation is based upon criteria such as Pareto or Kaldor-Hicks efficiency that require no interpersonal comparability. A different branch of welfare economics, for example optimal tax theory, uses “social welfare functions” (SWFs) to compare social states and governmental policies. Interpersonally comparable utility numbers provide the input for SWFs. But this scholarly tradition has never adequately explained the basis for these numbers.
John Harsanyi, in his work on so-called “extended preferences,” advanced a fruitful …
Welfare As Happiness, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur
Welfare As Happiness, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Future Generations: A Prioritarian View, Matthew D. Adler
Future Generations: A Prioritarian View, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan
Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan
Faculty Scholarship
We introduce a new "different lives" survey format, which asks respondents to rank hypothetical lives described in terms of longevity, health, happiness, income, and other elements of the quality of life. In this short paper, we show that the format is of policy relevance whether a mental state, preference satisfaction or extra-welfarist account of well-being is adopted and discuss some of the advantages the format has over standard formats, such as contingent valuation surveys and QALY-type methods. An exploratory survey indicates that the format is feasible and that health and happiness might be more important than income and life expectancy.
Economic Growth And The Interests Of Future (And Past And Present) Generations: A Comment On Tyler Cowen, Matthew D. Adler
Economic Growth And The Interests Of Future (And Past And Present) Generations: A Comment On Tyler Cowen, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Well-Being, Inequality And Time: The Time-Slice Problem And Its Policy Implications, Matthew D. Adler
Well-Being, Inequality And Time: The Time-Slice Problem And Its Policy Implications, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Should equality be viewed from a lifetime or "sublifetime" perspective? In measuring the inequality of income, for example, should we measure the inequality of lifetime income or of annual income? In characterizing a tax as "progressive" or "regressive," should we look to whether the annual tax burden increases with annual income, or instead to whether the lifetime tax burden increases with lifetime income? Should the overriding aim of anti-poverty programs be to reduce chronic poverty: being badly off for many years, because of low human capital or other long-run factors? Or is the moral claim of the impoverished person a …
Inequality And Uncertainty: Theory And Legal Applications, Matthew D. Adler, Chris William Sanchirico
Inequality And Uncertainty: Theory And Legal Applications, Matthew D. Adler, Chris William Sanchirico
Faculty Scholarship
"Welfarism" is the principle that social policy should be based solely on individual well-being, with no reference to 'fairness" or "rights." The propriety of this approach has recently been the subject of extensive debate within legal scholarship. Rather than contributing (directly) to this debate, we identify and analyze a problem within welfarism that has received far too little attentioncall this the "ex ante/ex post" problem. The problem arises from the combination of uncertainty-an inevitable feature of real policy choice-and a social preference for equality. If the policymaker is not a utilitarian, but rather has a "social welfare function" that is …
Welfare Polls: A Synthesis, Matthew D. Adler
Welfare Polls: A Synthesis, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
"Welfare polls" are survey instruments that seek to quantify the determinants of human well-being. Currently, three welfare polling formats are dominant: contingent valuation (CV) surveys, quality-adjusted life year (QALY) surveys, and happiness surveys. Each format has generated a large, specialized, scholarly literature, but no comprehensive discussion of welfare polling as a general enterprise exists.This Article seeks to fill that gap.
Part I describes the trio of existing formats. Part II discusses the current and potential uses of welfare polls in governmental decisionmaking. Part III analyzes in detail the obstacles that welfare polls must overcome to provide useful well-being information, and …
Against “Individual Risk”: A Sympathetic Critique Of Risk Assessment, Matthew D. Adler
Against “Individual Risk”: A Sympathetic Critique Of Risk Assessment, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Book Review: Fairness Vs. Welfare, Matthew D. Adler
Book Review: Fairness Vs. Welfare, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Reviewing Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell, Fairness versus Welfare (2002)
Cost-Benefit Analysis, Static Efficiency And The Goals Of Environmental Law, Matthew D. Adler
Cost-Benefit Analysis, Static Efficiency And The Goals Of Environmental Law, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Fear Assessment: Cost-Benefit Analysis And The Pricing Of Fear And Anxiety, Matthew D. Adler
Fear Assessment: Cost-Benefit Analysis And The Pricing Of Fear And Anxiety, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Risk assessment is now a common feature of regulatory practice, but fear assessment is not. In particular, environmental, health and safety agencies such as EPA, FDA, OSHA, NHTSA, and CPSC, commonly count death, illness and injury as costs for purposes of cost-benefit analysis, but almost never incorporate fear, anxiety or other welfare-reducing mental states into the analysis. This is puzzling, since fear and anxiety are welfare setbacks, and since the very hazards regulated by these agencies - air or water pollutants, toxic waste dumps, food additives and contaminants, workplace toxins and safety threats, automobiles, dangerous consumer products, radiation, and so …
Fear Assessment: Cost-Benefit Analysis And The Pricing Of Fear And Anxiety, Matthew D. Adler
Fear Assessment: Cost-Benefit Analysis And The Pricing Of Fear And Anxiety, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Introduction To, Preferences And Rational Choice: New Perspectives And Legal Implications, Matthew D. Adler, Claire Finkelstein, Peter Huang
Introduction To, Preferences And Rational Choice: New Perspectives And Legal Implications, Matthew D. Adler, Claire Finkelstein, Peter Huang
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Legal Transitions: Some Welfarist Remarks, Matthew D. Adler
Legal Transitions: Some Welfarist Remarks, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
This essay offers a sympathetic, utilitarian critique of Louis Kaplow's famous argument for legal retroactivity in his 1986 article, "An Economic Analysis of Legal Transitions." The argument, very roughly, is that the prospect of retroactivity is desirable if citizens are rational because it gives them a desirable incentive to anticipate legal change. My central claim is that this argument trades upon a dubious, objective view of probability that assumes rational citizens assign the same probabilities to states as rational governmental officials. But it is subjective, not objective probabilities that bear on rational choice, and the subjective probabilities of rational citizens …
The Puzzle Of Ex Ante Efficiency: Does Rational Approvability Have Moral Weight?, Matthew D. Adler
The Puzzle Of Ex Ante Efficiency: Does Rational Approvability Have Moral Weight?, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
A governmental decision is "ex ante efficient" if it maximizes the satisfaction of everyone's preferences ex ante, relative to other possible decisions. Equivalently, each affected person would be rational to approve the decision, given her preferences and beliefs at the time of the choice. Does this matter, morally speaking? Do governmental officials - legislators, judges, regulators - have a moral reason to make decisions that are ex ante efficient? The economist's answer is "yes." "Ex ante efficiency" is widely seen by welfare economists to have moral significance, and often appears within law-and-economics scholarship as a criterion for evaluating legal doctrines. …
Risk, Death And Harm: The Normative Foundations Of Risk Regulation, Matthew D. Adler
Risk, Death And Harm: The Normative Foundations Of Risk Regulation, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Is death a harm? Is the risk of death a harm? These questions lie at the foundations of risk regulation. Agencies that regulate threats to human life, such as the EPA, OSHA, the FDA, the CPSC, or NHTSA, invariably assume that premature death is a first-party harm - a welfare setback to the person who dies - and often assume that being at risk of death is a distinct and additional first-party harm. If these assumptions are untrue, the myriad statutes and regulations that govern risky activities should be radically overhauled, since the third-party benefits of preventing premature death and …
The Positive Political Theory Of Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Comment On Johnston, Matthew D. Adler
The Positive Political Theory Of Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Comment On Johnston, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Risk, Death And Time: A Comment On Judge Williams’ Defense Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler
Risk, Death And Time: A Comment On Judge Williams’ Defense Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Expressive Theories Of Law: A Skeptical Overview, Matthew D. Adler
Expressive Theories Of Law: A Skeptical Overview, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
An "expressive theory of law" is, very roughly, a theory that evaluates the actions of legal officials in light of what those actions mean, symbolize, or express. Expressive theories have long played a role in legal scholarship and, recently, have become quite prominent. Elizabeth Anderson, Robert Cooter, Dan Kahan, Larry Lessig, and Richard Pildes, among others, have all recently defended expressive theories (or at least theories that might be characterized as expressive). Expressive notions also play a part in judicial doctrine, particularly in the areas of the Establishment Clause and the Equal Protection Clause.
This paper attempts to provide a …
Beyond Efficiency And Procedure: A Welfarist Theory Of Regulation, Matthew D. Adler
Beyond Efficiency And Procedure: A Welfarist Theory Of Regulation, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Normative scholarship about regulation has been dominated by two types of theories, which I term "Neoclassical" and "Proceduralist." A Neoclassical theory has the following features: it adopts a simple preference-based view of well-being, and it counts Kaldor-Hicks efficiency as one of the basic normative criteria relevant to the evaluation of regulatory programs. A Proceduralist theory is concerned, not solely with the quality of regulatory outcomes, but also with the governmental procedures that produce these outcomes: it gives intrinsic significance to the procedures that regulatory bodies follow. (One example of a Proceduralist theory is the civic republican theory of regulation advanced …
Implementing Cost-Benefit Analysis When Preferences Are Distorted, Matthew D. Adler, Eric A. Posner
Implementing Cost-Benefit Analysis When Preferences Are Distorted, Matthew D. Adler, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
Cost-benefit analysis is routinely used by government agencies in order to evaluate projects, but it remains controversial among academics. This paper argues that cost-benefit analysis is best understood as a welfarist decision procedure and that use of cost-benefit analysis is more likely to maximize overall well-being than is use of alternative decision-procedures. The paper focuses on the problem of distorted preference. A person's preferences are distorted when his or her satisfaction does not enhance that person's well-being. Preferences typically thought to be distorted in this sense include disinterested preferences, uninformed preferences, adaptive preferences, and objectively bad preferences; further, preferences may …
Rethinking Cost-Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler, Eric A. Posner
Rethinking Cost-Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
This paper analyzes cost-benefit analysis from legal, economic, and philosophical perspectives. The traditional defense of cost-benefit analysis is that it maximizes a social welfare function that aggregates unweighted and unrestricted preferences. We follow many economists and philosophers who conclude that this defense is not persuasive. Cost-benefit analysis unavoidably depends on controversial distributive judgments; and the view that the government should maximize the satisfaction of unrestricted preferences is not plausible. However, we disagree with critics who argue that cost-benefit analysis produces morally irrelevant evaluations of projects and should be abandoned. On the contrary, cost-benefit analysis, suitably constrained, is consistent with a …