Review of Economic Philosophy

Tag: Welfare economics

  • Economic evaluation in health through the prism of Foucault’s typology of Epistemes

    Abstract

    This article is part of a research project which seeks to draw on the methods and tools put forward by Michel Foucault to shed light on all areas of discussion concerning the economic assessment of health. It examines the epistemological basis of preference elicitation methods, based on welfare economics, which are used today to assess the benefits of health care. To do so, this research draws on Foucault’s episteme set out in The Order of things. More specifically the article considers that the rejection of interpersonal comparisons that foreshadowed the marginalist revolution and the transition to ordinal measures of utility during the 19th century can be explained by the shift from the classical episteme to a modern episteme. The question of the cardinal or ordinal measurement of utility is central to the economic assessment of health care. Indeed, the methods for valuing health benefits, especially using QALYs, are similar to cardinal measures, in contrast to the paradigm of the welfare economics of which they are meant to be part.

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  • Notes on economics imperialism and norms of scientific inquiry

    Abstract

    This paper explores possible foundations and directions for “Neo-Samuelsonian Welfare Economics” (NSWE). I argue that neo-Samuelsonian economics entails a reconciliation problem between positive and normative economics due to the fact that it cuts the relationship between economic agency (i.e. what and who the economic agent is) and normative agency (i.e. what should the locus of welfare analysis be). I explore two possibilities and argue that both are attractive but have radically different implications for the status of normative economics. The first possibility consists in fully endorsing a normative approach in terms of “formal welfarism” which is completely neutral regarding both the locus and the unit measure of welfare analysis. The main implication is then to make welfare economics a branch of positive economics. The second possibility is to consider that human persons should be regarded as axiologically relevant because while they are not prototypical economic agents, they have the ability to represent them both to themselves and to others as reasonable and reliable beings through narrative construction processes. This gives a justification for viewing well-being as being constituted by the persons’ preferences, but only because these preferences are grounded on reasons and values defining the identity of the persons.

    JEL Codes: B41, D04, D63.

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  • Neuroscience and public policy: Toward a new economic interventionism?

    Abstract

    Neuroscience is used in economics to improve the description and comprehension of individual choice behavior. It can also serve as a means of evaluating decision-makers’ rationality and regulating their behaviors. This paper analyzes the normative implications of neuroeconomics, i.e. the contributions of neuroscience to welfare economics and public economics. The economic interventions advocated by neuroeconomists (e.g. Bernheim and Rangel 2004) are interpreted as neoliberal politics in Michel Foucault’s sense (1978b). Neuroimaging techniques do not allow the “brain-manipulation” of decision-makers. They can detect pathological or irrational behaviors. This assessment calls for a behavioral regulation of welfare, which has to be distinguished from Sunstein and Thaler’s libertarian paternalism (Sunstein and Thaler 2003). The intervention targets the environment rather than the individual in both cases, but the theoretical justification is not the same. As for neuroeconomists, irrational behaviors such as addictions do not come from an individual’s cognitive bias but from an interaction with a pathological environment. The normative reflections in neuroeconomics continue the theoretical history proposed by Foucault in his works on biopolitics and neoliberalism (Foucault 2004b). Our analysis can thus be regarded as a contribution to studies on governmentality. It claims that there is a specific non-reductionist relationship between knowledge and power in Foucault’s thought.

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  • From Utilitarianism to Paternalism: When Behavioral Economics meets Moral Philosophy

    Abstract

    Most behavioral economists take the normative implications of their experimental findings to be broadly paternalistic. They tend to suggest that the results of behavioral economics logically entail the extension of the set of public interventions on the market. In this article, I show that this conclusion follows from an implicit normative reasoning that is unsustainable because behavioral economists remain committed to standard welfare economics. I suggest that the behavioral economists’ defense of paternalism can be understood as an attempt to maximize a social welfare function taking into account the fact that individuals make incoherent choices. But this defense depends on a theory of rational preferences that behavioral economists do not have. Moreover, a defense of paternalism in a welfarist framework leads to downplay the agency dimension of persons. Alternative defenses of soft paternalism may exist but likely require that normative behavioral economics gives up welfarism.

    Classification JEL : A13, B41, D03, D60

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