Robert Sugden
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198825142
- eISBN:
- 9780191863813
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198825142.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Behavioural Economics
Normative analysis in economics has usually aimed at satisfying individuals’ preferences. Its conclusions have supported a long-standing liberal tradition of economics that values economic freedom ...
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Normative analysis in economics has usually aimed at satisfying individuals’ preferences. Its conclusions have supported a long-standing liberal tradition of economics that values economic freedom and views markets favourably. However, behavioural research shows that individuals’ preferences, as revealed in choices, are often unstable, and vary according to contextual factors that seem irrelevant for welfare. The Community of Advantage proposes a reformulation of normative economics that is compatible with what is now known about the psychology of choice. Other such reformulations have assumed that people have well-defined ‘latent’ preferences which, because of psychologically-induced errors, are not always revealed in actual choices. According to these reformulations, the economist’s job is to reconstruct latent preferences and to design policies to satisfy them. The argument of this book is that latent preference and error are psychologically ungrounded concepts, and that economics needs to be more radical in giving up rationality assumptions. The book advocates a kind of normative economics that does not use the concept of preference. Its recommendations are addressed, not to an imagined ‘social planner’, but to citizens, viewed as potential parties to mutually beneficial agreements. Its normative criterion is the provision of opportunities for individuals to participate in voluntary transactions. Using this approach, many of the normative conclusions of the liberal tradition are reconstructed. It is argued that a well-functioning market economy is an institution that individuals have reason to value, whether or not their preferences satisfy conventional axioms of rationality, and that individuals’ motivations in such an economy can be cooperative rather than self-interested.Less
Normative analysis in economics has usually aimed at satisfying individuals’ preferences. Its conclusions have supported a long-standing liberal tradition of economics that values economic freedom and views markets favourably. However, behavioural research shows that individuals’ preferences, as revealed in choices, are often unstable, and vary according to contextual factors that seem irrelevant for welfare. The Community of Advantage proposes a reformulation of normative economics that is compatible with what is now known about the psychology of choice. Other such reformulations have assumed that people have well-defined ‘latent’ preferences which, because of psychologically-induced errors, are not always revealed in actual choices. According to these reformulations, the economist’s job is to reconstruct latent preferences and to design policies to satisfy them. The argument of this book is that latent preference and error are psychologically ungrounded concepts, and that economics needs to be more radical in giving up rationality assumptions. The book advocates a kind of normative economics that does not use the concept of preference. Its recommendations are addressed, not to an imagined ‘social planner’, but to citizens, viewed as potential parties to mutually beneficial agreements. Its normative criterion is the provision of opportunities for individuals to participate in voluntary transactions. Using this approach, many of the normative conclusions of the liberal tradition are reconstructed. It is argued that a well-functioning market economy is an institution that individuals have reason to value, whether or not their preferences satisfy conventional axioms of rationality, and that individuals’ motivations in such an economy can be cooperative rather than self-interested.
Robert Sugden
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198825142
- eISBN:
- 9780191863813
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198825142.003.0002
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Behavioural Economics
Chapter 2 addresses a question that economists rarely ask when they engage in normative analysis: to whom is this analysis addressed? I argue that both neoclassical and behavioural economists usually ...
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Chapter 2 addresses a question that economists rarely ask when they engage in normative analysis: to whom is this analysis addressed? I argue that both neoclassical and behavioural economists usually write as if addressing an imagined ‘social planner’, conceptualized as a benevolent autocrat who agrees with them on all controversial issues. Philosophers who write about normative economics sometimes imagine instead that they are engaging in ‘public reasoning’, addressing an assembly of moral agents who are trying to decide what, all things considered, is good for people (individually and collectively). Both approaches treat normative analysis as an attempt to find a ‘view from nowhere’—an impartial view of what is good for people that is not any actual person’s view of what is good for him. But this is not the only viewpoint from which normative analysis can be made.Less
Chapter 2 addresses a question that economists rarely ask when they engage in normative analysis: to whom is this analysis addressed? I argue that both neoclassical and behavioural economists usually write as if addressing an imagined ‘social planner’, conceptualized as a benevolent autocrat who agrees with them on all controversial issues. Philosophers who write about normative economics sometimes imagine instead that they are engaging in ‘public reasoning’, addressing an assembly of moral agents who are trying to decide what, all things considered, is good for people (individually and collectively). Both approaches treat normative analysis as an attempt to find a ‘view from nowhere’—an impartial view of what is good for people that is not any actual person’s view of what is good for him. But this is not the only viewpoint from which normative analysis can be made.
