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OPPORTUNITY AND PREFERENCE LEARNING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

Christian Schubert
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Abstract:

Robert Sugden has suggested a normative standard of freedom as ‘opportunity’ that is supposed to help realign normative economics – with its traditional rational choice orientation – with behavioural economics. While allowing preferences to be incoherent, he wants to maintain the anti-paternalist stance of orthodox welfare economics. His standard, though, presupposes that people respond to uncertainty about their own future preferences by dismissing any kind of self-constraint. We argue that the approach lacks psychological substance: Sugden's normative benchmark – the ‘responsible person’ – can hardly serve as a convincing role model in a contractarian setting. An alternative concept is introduced, and some implications are briefly discussed.

Keywords

Opportunity criterionpreference changereconciliation problem
Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , July 2015 , pp. 275 - 295
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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