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.
