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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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- Well-being (30)
- Cost effectiveness (19)
- Social welfare (17)
- Welfare economics (14)
- Public welfare (11)
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- Utilitarianism (8)
- Consequentialism (Ethics) (7)
- Quality of life (7)
- Administrative agencies (6)
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- Preferences (Philosophy) (5)
- Distributive justice (4)
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- Poverty (2)
- Rational choice theory (2)
- Risk management (2)
- Administrative law (1)
- Choice (Psychology) (1)
Articles 1 - 30 of 42
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
A Better Calculus For Regulators: From Cost-Benefit Analysis To The Social Welfare Function, Matthew D. Adler
A Better Calculus For Regulators: From Cost-Benefit Analysis To The Social Welfare Function, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
The “social welfare function” (SWF) is a powerful tool that originates in theoretical welfare economics and has wide application in economic scholarship, for example in optimal tax theory and environmental economics. This Article provides a comprehensive introduction to the SWF framework. It then shows how the SWF framework can be used as the basis for regulatory policy analysis, and why it improves upon cost-benefit analysis (CBA).
Two types of SWFs are especially plausible: the utilitarian SWF, which sums individual well-being numbers, and the prioritarian SWF, which gives extra weight to the well-being of the worse off. Either one of these …
Benefit-Cost Analysis And Distributional Weights: An Overview, Matthew D. Adler
Benefit-Cost Analysis And Distributional Weights: An Overview, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is insensitive to distributional concerns. A policy that improves the lives of the rich, and makes the poor yet worse off, will be approved by CBA as long as the policy’s aggregate monetized benefits are positive. Distributional weights offer an apparent solution to this troubling feature of the CBA methodology: adjust costs and benefits with weighting factors that are inversely proportional to the well-being levels (as determined by income and also perhaps non-income attributes such as health) of the affected individuals.
Indeed, an academic literature dating from the 1950s discusses how to specify distributional weights. And …
Aggregating Moral Preferences, Matthew D. Adler
Aggregating Moral Preferences, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Preference-aggregation problems arise in various contexts. One such context, little explored by social choice theorists, is metaethical. “Ideal-advisor” accounts, which have played a major role in metaethics, propose that moral facts are constituted by the idealized preferences of a community of advisors. Such accounts give rise to a preference-aggregation problem: namely, aggregating the advisors’ moral preferences. Do we have reason to believe that the advisors, albeit idealized, can still diverge in their rankings of a given set of alternatives? If so, what are the moral facts (in particular, the comparative moral goodness of the alternatives) when the advisors do diverge? …
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 …
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.
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. …
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 …
The Social Value Of Mortality Risk Reduction: Vsl Vs. The Social Welfare Function Approach, Matthew D. Adler, James K. Hammitt, Nicolas Treich
The Social Value Of Mortality Risk Reduction: Vsl Vs. The Social Welfare Function Approach, Matthew D. Adler, James K. Hammitt, Nicolas Treich
Faculty Scholarship
We examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality risk reduction. These frameworks include classical, distributively unweighted cost–benefit analysis—i.e., the “value per statistical life” (VSL) approach—and various social welfare functions (SWFs). The SWFs are either utilitarian or prioritarian, applied to policy choice under risk in either an “ex post” or “ex ante” manner. We examine the conditions on individual utility and on the SWF under which these frameworks display sensitivity to wealth and to baseline risk. Moreover, we discuss whether these frameworks satisfy related properties that have received some attention in the literature, namely equal value of …
Book Review, Matthew D. Adler
Extended Preferences And Interpersonal Comparisons: A New Account, Matthew D. Adler
Extended Preferences And Interpersonal Comparisons: A New Account, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Consumption, Risk And Prioritarianism, Matthew D. Adler, Nicolas Treich
Consumption, Risk And Prioritarianism, Matthew D. Adler, Nicolas Treich
Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, we study consumption decisions under risk assuming a prioritarian social welfare function, namely a concave transformation of individual utility functions. Under standard assumptions, there is always more current consumption under ex ante prioritarianism than under utilitarianism. Thus, a concern for equity (in the ex ante prioritarian sense) means less concern for the risky future. In contrast, there is usually less current consumption under ex post prioritarianism than under utilitarianism. We discuss the robustness of these results to learning, and to other forms of prioritarian social welfare functions.
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 …
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 …
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 …
Happiness Research And Cost-Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler, Eric A. Posner
Happiness Research And Cost-Benefit Analysis, Matthew D. Adler, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
A growing body of research on happiness or subjective well-being (SWB) shows, among other things, that people adapt to many injuries more rapidly than is commonly thought, fail to predict the degree of adaptation and hence overestimate the impact of those injuries on their SWB, and, similarly, enjoy small or moderate rather than significant changes in SWBg in response to significant changes in income. Some researchers believe that these findings pose a challenge to cost-benefit analysis, and argue that project evaluation decision-procedures based on economic premises should be replaced with procedures that directly maximize subjective well-being. This view turns out …
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.
Contingent Valuation Studies And Health Policy, Matthew D. Adler
Contingent Valuation Studies And Health Policy, Matthew D. Adler
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.
Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler
Risk Equity: A New Proposal, 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 …
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.
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 …
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)
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.
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.
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 …