Speaker：Roberto FUMAGALLI [King's College London]

A chair： Akira INOUE [Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo]

Date：January 26, 2022／17:30‐19:00 (JST)

Location：Zoom

Title：Preferences versus Opportunities: Which Conceptual Foundation for Normative Welfare Economics?

Target:：Open to the public

Abstract：Normative welfare economics commonly assumes that individuals' preferences can be reliably inferred from their choices and relies on preference satisfaction as the normative standard for welfare. In recent years, several authors have criticized welfare economists' reliance on preference satisfaction as the normative standard for welfare and have advocated grounding normative welfare economics on opportunities rather than preferences. In this paper, I argue that although preference-based approaches to normative welfare economics face significant conceptual and practical challenges, opportunity-based approaches fail to provide a more reliable and informative foundation for normative welfare economics than preference-based approaches. I then identify and rebut influential calls to ground normative welfare economics on opportunities rather than preferences to support my qualified defence of preference-based approaches.

This Workshop will be held in English.

co-hosted by The Seminar of International Social Science Studies