Normative Behavioural Economics Based on Unconditional Love and Moral Virtue

Abstract

An important difficulty in many models of behavioural economics is that preferences are endogenous and unstable. Therefore, preferences may not provide the most desirable yardstick to evaluate social states. The present paper proposes unconditional love as a candidate for such a yardstick. The concept of unconditional love, although lofty, is often hard to apply for practical policy recommendations. We propose an intermediary learning stage, where learning to unconditionally love is desirable, and policies that promote such learning are deemed to be good. We illustrate the use of this principle in models of endogenous altruism.

Economics of the community mechanism

“…Based on this idea, Bhatt et al ( 2017 ) proposed an analytical framework that introduces virtue ethics as well as pure welfare principles into models with endogenous preferences. Bhatt et al ( 2015 ) applied this analytical framework to advocate the principle of “learning to unconditionally love,” in which utility-based welfarism is balanced with virtue learning toward the moral obligation to unconditionally love.…”

“…This modification of adding “as long as x is not evaluated to be worse than y by other ethically relevant factors” to the Weak Pareto Principle is an application of Temkin’s ( 2011 ) concept to endogenous preference models by Bhatt et al, ( 2015 , 2017 ). Bhatt et al ( 2017 ) use meta-preference for the introduction of the virtue ethics principle.…”

“…As an application of such an analytical framework, Bhatt et al ( 2015 ) developed an economic model (based on Mulligan, 1997 ) in which parents’ altruism toward their children increases when they spend more time with them. When virtue ethics is introduced as well as welfarism, which emphasizes utility, optimal policy changes from prioritizing GDP to considering the deepening of bonds through time spent at home.…”