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Behavioral fair social choice

Author

Listed:
  • FLEURBAEY, Marc

    (Princeton University, USA)

  • SCHOKKAERT, Erik

    (Department of Economics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)

Abstract
Behavioral economics has shaken the view that individuals have well-defined, consistent and stable preferences. This raises a challenge for welfare economics, which takes as a key postulate that individual preferences should be respected. We agree with Bernheim (2009) and Bernheim and Rangel (2009) that behavioral economics is compatible with consistency of partial preferences and that subjective welfare measures do not offer an attractive way out of the impasse. However, their analysis which rests on traditional concepts like Pareto optimality and compensation tests, is not adequate to introduce distributional considerations. We explore how partial preferences can be introduced in the recent theory of welfare that has developed from the theory of fair allocation. We revisit the key results of that theory in a framework with partial preferences and show how one can derive partial orderings of individual and social situations.

Suggested Citation

  • FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2011. "Behavioral fair social choice," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011043, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2011043
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    File URL: https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2011.html
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fleurbaey,Marc & Maniquet,François, 2011. "A Theory of Fairness and Social Welfare," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521715348, September.
    2. Beshears, John & Choi, James J. & Laibson, David & Madrian, Brigitte C., 2008. "How are preferences revealed?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(8-9), pages 1787-1794, August.
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    11. B. Douglas Bernheim & Antonio Rangel, 2009. "Beyond Revealed Preference: Choice-Theoretic Foundations for Behavioral Welfare Economics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 51-104.
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    Cited by:

    1. Pivato, Marcus, 2013. "Social welfare with incomplete ordinal interpersonal comparisons," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 405-417.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    behavioral economics; preferences; welfare economics; psychology; social choice; fairness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

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