scholarly journals Extended Preferences and Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-being

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 636-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Greaves ◽  
Harvey Lederman
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Extended Preferences

Equivalent Income

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Fleurbaey
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Market Prices ◽  
Equivalent Income ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Welfare Evaluation ◽  
Promising Solution ◽  
Extended Preferences

The notion of equivalent income has been elaborated in the specialized context of comparing living standards of individuals in different situations regarding non-income attributes (household size, quality of life, market prices). It is defined as the income that would provide the same satisfaction as the current situation if the non-income attributes took particular reference values. Beyond the comparison of living standards, it deserves to be considered as a philosophically promising solution to the problem of interpersonal comparisons of well-being, for the context of social welfare evaluation. It appears indeed attractive when interpersonal comparisons are meant to respect individual preferences while focusing on objective functionings rather than subjective levels of satisfaction or happiness. In this chapter it is scrutinized and compared to alternative approaches: extended preferences, subjective well-being, capabilities.

scholarly journals EXTENDED PREFERENCES AND INTERPERSONAL COMPARISONS: A NEW ACCOUNT

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Utility Function ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Extended Preferences ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This paper builds upon, but substantially revises, John Harsanyi's concept of ‘extended preferences’. An individual ‘history’ is a possible life that some person (a subject) might lead. Harsanyi supposes that a given spectator, formulating her ethical preferences, can rank histories by empathetic projection: putting herself ‘in the shoes’ of various subjects. Harsanyi then suggests that interpersonal comparisons be derived from the utility function representing spectators’ (supposedly common) ranking of history lotteries. Unfortunately, Harsanyi's proposal has various flaws, including some that have hitherto escaped scholarly attention. In particular, it ignores the limits of personal identity. If the subject has welfare-relevant attributes that the spectator cannot acquire without changing who she is, full empathetic identification of the latter with the former becomes impossible. This paper proposes instead to use sympathy as the attitude on a spectator's part that allows us to make sense of her extended preferences. Sympathy – an attitude of care and concern – is a psychological state quite different from empathy. We should also allow for hetereogeneity in spectators’ extended preferences. Interpersonal comparisons emerge from a plurality of sympathetic spectators, not (as per Harsanyi) from a common empathetic ranking.

scholarly journals Some Uses of Happiness Data in Economics

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Di Tella ◽  
Robert MacCulloch
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Empirical Measures ◽  
Happiness Research ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Individual Welfare

Happiness research is based on the idea that it is fruitful to study empirical measures of individual welfare. The most common is the answer to a simple well-being question such as “Are you Happy?” Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been asked this question, in many countries and over many years. Researchers have begun to use these data to tackle a variety of important questions in economics. Some require strong assumptions concerning interpersonal comparisons of utility, but others make only mild assumptions in this regard. They range from microeconomic questions, such as the way income and utility are connected, to macroeconomic questions such as the tradeoff between inflation and unemployment, including large areas in political economy. Public policy is another area where progress using happiness data is taking place. Given the central role of utility notions in economic theory, we argue that the use of happiness data in empirical research should be given serious consideration.

Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being.

1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Michael Hechter ◽  
Jon Elster ◽  
John E. Roemer
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons

scholarly journals Interpersonal Comparisons of Well‐Being

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Blackorby ◽  
Walter Bossert
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Formal Definition ◽  
Social Evaluation ◽  
Invariance Properties ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Short Survey ◽  
Basic Notation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Important Characterization

This article provides a short survey of the use of interpersonal comparisons in social evaluation. The focus of this discussion is on the principles for social evaluation that are welfarist, or those principles that use information about individual well-being to rank alternatives. The article reviews some of the most important characterization results for the welfarist social evaluation principles. A basic notation, along with a formal definition of social evaluation functionals, is introduced. The article then formulates some basic axioms for social evaluation orderings, and this is followed by an introduction to information invariance properties. The article also provides an overview of some important results.

Extended Preferences

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Functional Form ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Utility Functions ◽  
Equivalent Income ◽  
Extended Preferences

This chapter presents a methodology for constructing an interpersonally comparable measure of individual well-being, the “extended preferences” approach. It builds upon John Harsanyi’s work. The key idea is that an ethical deliberator makes (or at least is capable of making) judgments concerning the well-being levels of histories and well-being differences between histories—where a history is a hybrid bundle consisting of possible attributes an individual might have, plus possible preference (“tastes”) regarding such attributes. These judgments are represented by a well-being measure. If the deliberator adopts a preference-based conception of well-being, the functional form of that well-being measure can be partly inferred from the utility functions representing the tastes incorporated in histories. That is: the deliberator partly infers what the well-being numbers she assigns to histories must be, given her deference to individual tastes. The chapter also compares the extended-preferences approach to competing methodologies for measuring well-being, in particular the equivalent-income concept.

scholarly journals SOCIAL CHOICE AND JUST INSTITUTIONS: NEW PERSPECTIVES

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARC FLEURBAEY
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Impossibility Theorem ◽  
Choice Functions ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Second Best ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Social Choice Functions

It has become accepted that social choice is impossible in the absence of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. This view is challenged here. Arrow obtained an impossibility theorem only by making unreasonable demands on social choice functions. With reasonable requirements, one can get very attractive possibilities and derive social preferences on the basis of non-comparable individual preferences. This new approach makes it possible to design optimal second-best institutions inspired by principles of fairness, while traditionally the analysis of optimal second-best institutions was thought to require interpersonal comparisons of well-being. In particular, this approach turns out to be especially suitable for the application of recent philosophical theories of justice formulated in terms of fairness, such as equality of resources.

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