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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 …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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)
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.
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 …
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 …