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This chapter has two main goals: to produce data that provide a complete picture of the preferences of insiders, outsiders, and upscale groups; and to test whether these preferences fit into the partisanship model proposed in this book. The chapter proceeds as follows. The first section provides a brief explanation of the survey used in the analysis and the way insiders, outsiders, and upscale groups have been categorized. The second section offers a detailed explanation of the individual preferences implied in the insider-outsider model and an initial and descriptive assessment of their accuracy. The third section contains a systematic multilevel analysis of the individual preferences of insiders, outsiders, and upscale groups. The fourth section introduces the two macro factors which, in Chapter 2, were hypothesized to affect the differences between insiders and outsiders: job security and corporatism. The final section presents multilevel maximum likelihood models estimating the effects of job security and corporatism. The results corroborate the model's claims: lower levels of employment protection do indeed make insiders more like outsiders (i.e., more supportive of labour market policy). The results support an economic insider-outsider interpretation of the effects of corporatism on insider preferences.

Though utilitarianism has been highly influential as a normative theory of public action, it has faced many searching criticisms throughout its history. In welfare economics, where the dominant conceptual framework was basically utilitarian for a long time, many distinctly non‐utilitarian ethical concerns have been explored in the last few decades. This chapter provides a review of some of the arguments advanced by the critics of utilitarianism as the basis of public action. The chapter starts with a discussion of some basic features of utilitarianism and then reviews a number of objections to utilitarianism, grouping them in three categories: (i) “problems of exclusion” (ii) “problems of inclusion” and (iii) “problems of aggregation”.

This chapter analyses the role of moral norms in shaping individual preferences and expectations in a way that is conducive to cooperation. It covers norms as constraints on the pursuit of self-interest, norms as social devices shaping preferences and expectations, and the emergence and erosion of moral norms.

Neoclassical theory proceeds from an analysis of individual preferences, a set of objective facts about which economics has nothing to say. From this arises the doctrine of the utilitarian relationship to things and the problem of general equilibrium. Walrasian adjustment and mediation by price is discussed. Girard's notion of mimetic desire is extended to the analysis of economic behavior, and the relevance of asymmetric information, quality, and conventions explored. The future as a source of uncertainty and risk is examined in relation to the role of money in neoclassical theory, and four postulates constituting what is called market objectivity are stated. The underlying logic of neoclassical theory is elucidated in terms of the ideal-type analysis devised by Weber and applied to economics by Walras.

This chapter started by describing the history of free verse, and stating that it is now more than a century old. The chapter also presents the implication of the claim for “neutral availability”, verse forms, whether free or otherwise, which are independent of history as well as of national and cultural context. In addition to that, the chapter states that a metrical choice is a question of individual preference and free verse is some kind of end point, an instance of writing degree zero from which the only reasonable “advance” can be a return to “normal” metrical forms. This chapter also defines the idea of free verse, and one of the definition is it is described by the lack of structuring grid based on counting of linguistic units and/or position of linguistic features.

Health economists can draw conclusions about what makes people better off from the preferences of competent evaluators if three conditions are met: (1) respondents have true beliefs concerning the relevant facts; (2) their preferences reflect their judgment concerning what promotes their own interests; and (3) their preferences satisfy the standard axioms and are not distorted by deliberative flaws. In the special context of eliciting preferences in order to assign values to health states, health economists might be able to shape the circumstances to enable people to satisfy the three conditions. This chapter shows that health economists have failed to implement this strategy and considers how much economists can do. In particular it considers the questions of whose preferences to elicit, whether averaging is defensible, and whether health economists should be eliciting preferences rather than attempting to evaluate health states themselves.