Pub Date : 2022-11-04DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2022.2141324
Caterina Marchionni
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Pub Date : 2022-10-10DOI: 10.1080/1350178x.2022.2129736
G. Hersch
It is an open question whether well-being ought to primarily be understood as a temporal concept or whether it only makes sense to talk about a person’s well-being over their whole lifetime. In this article, I argue that how this principled philosophical disagreement is settled does not have substantive practical implications for well-being science and well-being policy. Trying to measure lifetime well-being directly is extremely challenging as well as unhelpful for guiding well-being public policy, while temporal well-being is both an adequate indirect measure of lifetime well-being, and an adequate focus for the purposes of improving well-being through public policy. Consequently, even if what we ought to care about is lifetime well-being, we should use temporal measures of well-being and focus on temporal well-being policies.
{"title":"The usefulness of well-being temporalism","authors":"G. Hersch","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2022.2129736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2022.2129736","url":null,"abstract":"It is an open question whether well-being ought to primarily be understood as a temporal concept or whether it only makes sense to talk about a person’s well-being over their whole lifetime. In this article, I argue that how this principled philosophical disagreement is settled does not have substantive practical implications for well-being science and well-being policy. Trying to measure lifetime well-being directly is extremely challenging as well as unhelpful for guiding well-being public policy, while temporal well-being is both an adequate indirect measure of lifetime well-being, and an adequate focus for the purposes of improving well-being through public policy. Consequently, even if what we ought to care about is lifetime well-being, we should use temporal measures of well-being and focus on temporal well-being policies.","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86465511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2022.2129734
D. Russell
ABSTRACT Idealizations help us understand the world by simplifying it. When factors make discrete contributions to an outcome, leaving factors out can make it easier to identify the contributions of factors that remain. But typically in economics, factors are not discrete but interact; how can isolating some factor X from some factor Y help us understand a reality in which X’s contribution depends on what Y contributes? I argue that Ronald Coase’s method in ‘The Problem of Social Cost’ illustrates how idealization can aid our understanding of a world in which factor Y (transaction costs) has an effect on factor X (transactions), by making plain precisely that effect, and so making it easier to see features of the actual world that obtain because of that effect. ‘Coasean’ idealization is therefore especially useful for understanding targets in which factors are not discrete but interact, as is so often the case in economics.
理想化通过简化帮助我们理解世界。当因素对结果产生离散的贡献时，将因素排除在外可以更容易地确定剩余因素的贡献。但在经济学中，典型的因素不是离散的，而是相互作用的;把因素X从因素Y中分离出来怎么能帮助我们理解X的贡献取决于Y的贡献的现实呢?我认为，罗纳德·科斯(Ronald Coase)在《社会成本问题》(The Problem of Social Cost)中的方法说明了理想化是如何帮助我们理解一个因素Y(交易成本)对因素X(交易)产生影响的世界的，方法是精确地阐明这种影响，从而使我们更容易看到由于这种影响而获得的现实世界的特征。因此，“科斯”理想化对于理解目标特别有用，其中的因素不是离散的，而是相互作用的，就像经济学中经常出现的情况一样。
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Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2022.2145338
Erik W. Matson
ABSTRACT This essay uses concepts from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments to develop ideas about choice and welfare. I use those ideas to offer several challenges to common approaches to behavioral welfare economics and new paternalist policy making. Drawing on Smith’s dialectical concept of practical reason, which he develops in expositing ideas about self-awareness and self-judgment, I first argue that inconsistency need not be viewed as pathological. Inconsistent choices might indicate legitimate context-dependencies as individuals reflect over disjointed perspectives and act accordingly. Understanding inconsistency as reasonable raises epistemic difficulties for identifying errant choices and designing corrective policies. Second, I draw on Smith’s theory of the impartial spectator to discuss dynamic aspects of welfare. Welfare is not simply a matter of preference satisfaction but involves a sense of progress and improvement towards better preferences. Smith’s account suggests that economists interested in welfare should focus on institutional arrangements that facilitate self-development.
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Pub Date : 2022-08-16DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2022.2112266
L. Larue
ABSTRACT This article aims to defend a novel account of pluralism in economics. First, it argues that what justifies pluralism is its epistemological benefits. Second, it acknowledges that pluralism has limits, and defends reasonable pluralism, or the view that we should only accept those theories and methods that can be justified by their communities with reasons that other communities can accept. Clearly, reasonable pluralism is an ideal, which requires economists of different persuasions to respect certain norms of communication while evaluating each other’s theories. The article ends with a discussion of the conditions under which reasonable communication becomes possible.
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Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1080/1350178x.2022.2100919
Philippe van Basshuysen
Where economists previously viewed the market as arising from a ‘ spontaneous order ’ , antithetical to design, they now design markets to achieve speci fi c purposes. This paper reconstructs how this change in what markets are and can do came about and considers some consequences. Two decisive developments in economic theory are identi fi ed: fi rst, Hurwicz ’ s view of institutions as mechanisms, which should be designed to align incentives with social goals; and second, the notion of market places – consisting of infrastructure and algorithms – which should be designed to exhibit stable properties. These developments have empowered economists to create marketplaces for speci fi c purposes, by designing appropriate algorithms. I argue that this power to create marketplaces requires a shift in ethical reasoning, from whether markets should reach into certain spheres of life, to how market algorithms should be designed. I exemplify this shift, focusing on bias, and arguing that transparency should become a goal of market design.
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Pub Date : 2022-06-14DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2022.2088085
Nick Huntington-Klein
ABSTRACT Structural Causal Modeling (SCM) is an approach to causal inference closely associated with Judea Pearl and given an accessible instroduction in [Pearl, J., & Mackenzie, D. (2018). The book of why: The new science of cause and effect. Basic Books]. It is highly popular outside of economics, but has seen relatively little application within it. This paper briefly introduces the main concepts of SCM through the lens of whether applied economists are likely to find marginal benefit in these methods beyond standard economic approaches to causal inference. The most promising areas are those where SCM's causal diagrams alone offer significant value: covariate selection, the development of placebo tests, causal discovery, and identification in complex models.
{"title":"Pearl before economists: the book of why and empirical economics","authors":"Nick Huntington-Klein","doi":"10.1080/1350178X.2022.2088085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2022.2088085","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Structural Causal Modeling (SCM) is an approach to causal inference closely associated with Judea Pearl and given an accessible instroduction in [Pearl, J., & Mackenzie, D. (2018). The book of why: The new science of cause and effect. Basic Books]. It is highly popular outside of economics, but has seen relatively little application within it. This paper briefly introduces the main concepts of SCM through the lens of whether applied economists are likely to find marginal benefit in these methods beyond standard economic approaches to causal inference. The most promising areas are those where SCM's causal diagrams alone offer significant value: covariate selection, the development of placebo tests, causal discovery, and identification in complex models.","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81001272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-31DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2022.2077407
Michael Messerli, K. Reuter
ABSTRACT Commitments are crucial for our lives but there is no consensus on how commitments and preferences relate to each other. In this paper, we present three empirical studies that provide evidence that people sometimes choose a less preferred option when they have made a commitment.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-13DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2022.2075139
Enrico Petracca
Periodically, by a rough estimate twice per decade, a new popular book aspires to shake our common understanding of rationality. Since this concept is not only the backbone of normative analysis in the behavioral sciences but also of the way people more generally understand normativity, the stakes are particularly high. Among past successful attempts to rethink rationality are, so to refresh the memory, books of the caliber of Gigerenzer (2007), Kahneman (2011), and more recently Mercier and Sperber (2017). Because of its straightforward title, Rationality, and one enticing part of its subtitle, the promise to tell us What it is, Steven Pinker’s latest work aspires to be one of those ground-breaking books. There are two reasons, however, why readers might resist the temptation to consider Pinker’s book a foundational one. One reason is that in most of its parts it reads like a pamphlet, in which a world-renowned public intellectual attempts to shake the conscience of a world too dramatically lacking in reason and rationality (Pinker dispenses evidence of this masterfully). The public intellectual posture was to be expected, since Pinker has recently been in the vortex of inflamed debates over sensitive societal topics, and this book is in many regards a learned continuation of those debates. Pinker presents himself as a staunch advocate of freedom of speech and critical thinking, seen as requirements for democratic societies whose degree of rationality he deems to depend on a society’s capacity to deal with its ‘taboos’. Because of this posture, the book may risk being underestimated by those looking for a pristine foundational discussion. But another reason not to regard this book as foundational is the fact that Pinker does not present in it a novel idea of rationality. The readership of economists is certainly the most well equipped to understand that. The book’s central part, seven-elevenths of the total, is a superbly accessible guide to the edifice of rationality from the ground floor of logic (chapter 3) up to probability (chapter 4), Bayesian reasoning (chapter 5), rational choice theory (chapter 6), statistical decision theory (chapter 7), game theory (chapter 8), and the distinction between correlation and causation (chapter 9). The other four-elevenths are a demonstration that humans do not master these subjects – let alone apply them correctly to life – and a plea for why we should. This shows that Pinker does not really venture into a quest for the essence of rationality; what rationality is seems uncontroversial from the start: ‘My own position on rationality’, he says more as an adept than as a pioneer, ‘is “I’m for it”’ (p. 36). His true goal is to convince people to embrace rationality, challenge their belief that it is something ‘uncool’ and ‘cerebral’ that would turn one into a ‘nerd’, a ‘wonk’, a ‘geek’, or a ‘brainiac’ (p. 35, italics in original), not to challenge the classical idea of rationality. But even if one might thin
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