The Normative Economics of Social Risk
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23586243 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marc Fleurbaey (0000-0002-5342-8065, Princeton University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Pages | 423-445 |
| Publication date | 2019-06-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198793991.013.4 |
| OpenAlex | W2951274006 |
| ISBN | 9780198793991 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 25 |
Social decisions in risky contexts raise a number of difficult questions. Should social decisions be more or less risk averse than the average person? Should we try to avoid large catastrophes more than frequent but limited harms with similar expected impact? Should social decisions be ambiguity-averse or stick to the expected-utility canon? This chapter reviews the normative economics of risk and uncertainty and examines possible answers to these questions, based on the pros and cons of utilitarianism, ex ante egalitarianism, and ex post egalitarianism. The divide between ex ante and ex post approaches reflects a deep trade-off between rationality (embodied in the key properties of the expected utility approach), respect for individual risk attitudes (embodied in the ex ante Pareto principle), and priority for the worse off (or aversion to inequality).
Ambiguity · Ambiguity aversion · Economics · Egalitarianism · Embodied cognition · Ex-ante · Expected utility hypothesis · Inequality · Inequity aversion · Mathematical economics · Microeconomics · Normative · Pareto principle · Political science · Positive economics · Rationality · Risk aversion (psychology) · Social preferences · Utilitarianism · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Economic Theory and Institutions · Law · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems
Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior
Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms
Weighing Goods
Intertemporally Consistent Population Ethics
Priority or Equality for Possible People?
Generalized Utilitarianism and Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem
Sovereign Virtue
Rawls versus Bentham
Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare
Discounting, beyond Utilitarianism
Priority or Equality for Possible People
Escaping the repugnant conclusion
Representation and aggregation of preferences under uncertainty
Fair management of social risk
Social rationality, separability, and equity under uncertainty
Quadratic Social Welfare Functions
Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility
Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking
Risk, Impersonality, and the Social Welfare Function
The Role of Information in Choices Over Income Distributions
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |