Welfare economics in large worlds: welfare and public policies in an uncertain environment

Abstract

100 words): the aim of this paper is first to review the different conceptions of welfare advanced in the literature on behavioural welfare economics. I then argue that Savage's distinction between small and large worlds offers the adequate framework to conceptualise the problem of inferring a notion of welfare from possibly incoherent individual choices. I distinguish between welfarist, behaviourist, constitutional, and procedural approaches to the reconciliation problem, and show that they offer complementary solutions depending on the nature of the uncertainty of the choice problem, and on the epistemic position of the theoretician with respect to the agent we intend to model.

TheHomer economicusnarrative: from cognitive psychology to individual public policies

“…11 See Guala (2005, 141-160) for a general discussion, and Lecouteux (2021b) for the distinction between small and large worlds in behavioural welfare econonics.…”