The new institutional economics offers one of the most exciting research agendas in economics tod... more The new institutional economics offers one of the most exciting research agendas in economics today. Yet can it really explain processes of economic change? Economic Evolution explores three of the main approaches within the new institutional economics: * the new theory of ...
Health care systems are challenged in allocating scarce health care resources, which are typicall... more Health care systems are challenged in allocating scarce health care resources, which are typically insufficient to fulfil all health care wants and needs. One criterion for priority setting may be the 'acceptable health' approach, which suggests that society may want to assign higher priority to health benefits in people with "unacceptable" than in people with "acceptable" health. A level of acceptable health then serves as a reference point for priority setting. Empirical research has indicated that people may be able and willing to define health states as "unacceptable" or "acceptable", but little attention has been given to the normative implications of evaluating health benefits in relation to a reference level of acceptable health. The current paper aims to address this gap by relating insights from the distributive justice literature, i.e. the sufficientarian literature, to the acceptable health approach, as we argue that these approaches are related. We specifically focus on the implications of an 'acceptability' approach for priority weighting of health benefits, derived from sufficientarian reasoning and debates, and assess the moral implications of such weighting.
Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence.
ABSTRACT The serious side of the Economics Made Fun genre stems from its mantra that people respo... more ABSTRACT The serious side of the Economics Made Fun genre stems from its mantra that people respond to incentives. As Levitt and Dubner put it, economists typically believe they can solve virtually all problems by designing a proper incentive scheme. What is not always sufficiently appreciated is that Levitt and Dubner argue that economists nowadays grant the existence of social and moral incentives, besides the standard economic ones. A glance at the relevant literature in academic economics confirms this. Although there is an ongoing debate in academic economics about the necessity and desirability of introducing social preferences in utility functions and also about the relative strengths of various sorts of preferences, economists increasingly take the existence of various sorts of incentives and motivations into account. The recognition of non-monetary incentives and of non-economic motivation makes the economic approach to policy making more comprehensive and flexible. But since there might be various kinds of interaction effects between different sorts of incentives and different sorts of motivations, it also vastly complicates devising optimal policy schemes. What Levitt and Dubner say almost in passing about the “strange nature” of incentives also reflects the present state of art in academic economics: while it is increasingly acknowledged that different sorts of incentives and different sorts of motivations might interact in various ways, little is still known about when, under what conditions, the one or the other interaction effect obtains. Yet knowledge of the latter is required to devise optimal incentive schemes. Thus even though Levitt and Dubner might be right that economists are quite confident that they can solve virtually all problems by devising optimal incentive schemes, it seems the limited understanding of incentives, motivations and their various interaction effects in present-day academic economics falls short of bolstering this confidence.
indeterminacy in the concept of voluntariness, the only way to proceed is to consider the plausib... more indeterminacy in the concept of voluntariness, the only way to proceed is to consider the plausibility of claims such as this: Where A agrees to transfer property to B and B has acted within his rights during the transaction, the transfer preserves justice. Or this: Where A agrees to transfer property to B and A’s assent is not given because there is no acceptable alternative, the transfer preserves justice. Spell them out, and neither proposition seems remotely plausible to me, but that’s because I believe that the law of property and its transfer is but one important part of the entire legal and economic institutional scheme, and that different possible total schemes should be evaluated instrumentally, by looking at the outcomes they produce. Be that as it may, the real contribution of the second half of Liberty, desert and the market is not to provide a correct account of the concept of voluntariness and draw normative conclusions from that. Rather it is a contribution to the critique of libertarian ideology, which has so far mostly focused on the use of the rhetoric of freedom and ownership. Olsaretti highlights the crucial role of the idea of voluntariness – as the key to the libertarian ‘principle of justice in transfer’ – and shows that the libertarian interpretation of this notion is not irresistible, and that libertarians therefore cannot help themselves to the plausible sounding rhetoric about the free market being just in virtue of being the domain of voluntary exchange.
Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics brings together contributions from eminent authors who, buil... more Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics brings together contributions from eminent authors who, building on Darwin’s own insights and on developments in evolutionary theory, offer challenging views on how economics can use evolutionary ideas effectively.
Page 132. Taking evolution seriously: what difference does it make for economics? Jack J. Vromen ... more Page 132. Taking evolution seriously: what difference does it make for economics? Jack J. Vromen Introduction The issue what relevance (if any) the theme of evolution has for economics can be tackled from several vantage points. ...
Erasmus journal for philosophy and economics, Jul 3, 2015
This interview was conducted by Willem van der Deijl and Vaios Koliofotis. Van der Deijl is a PhD... more This interview was conducted by Willem van der Deijl and Vaios Koliofotis. Van der Deijl is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE) and co-editor of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. Koliofotis is a PhD candidate at EIPE, specializing in evolutionary explanations of economic behaviour. Learning from the right neighbour: an interview with Jack Vromen JACK J. VROMEN (Heerlen, 1958) is professor of theoretical philosophy, with a special emphasis on the philosophy of economics, dean of the philosophy faculty at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and director (and co-founder) of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE). He earned master's degrees in economics and in philosophy of economics from the University of Tilburg, and a PhD in economics from the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Neil De Marchi. Vromen has a particular research interest in evolutionary thinking and economic methodology. He is the author of Economic evolution: an enquiry into the foundations of 'new institutional economics' (1995), and (co-)editor of numerous anthologies, including Institutions and the evolution of capitalism; implications of evolutionary economics (1999, with John Groenewegen), The social institutions of capitalism: evolution and design of social contracts (2003, with Hans van Oosterhout and Pursey Heugens), and most recently The economics of economists (2014, with Alessandro Lanteri). EJPE interviewed Jack Vromen about becoming a philosopher of economics, his interest in evolution and its relation to economics, and the role he has played in the formation of EIPE, a major centre for the study of philosophy of economics. In this interview Vromen explains why he believes biology is a discipline much closer to economics than many economists realize, why the concept of evolution is important for understanding economic processes and for the economic discipline, and also why evolutionary economics never became mainstream when many believed that it would. EJPE: You are an economist by training. How did you end up the dean of a philosophy faculty? JACK VROMEN: Well, I have to correct you there. I am not just an economist by training, I also did philosophy. In Tilburg University, there was the possibility of doing a double-degree program in philosophy of
The publication of Robert Sugden’s The Community of Advantage in 2018 might very well turn out to... more The publication of Robert Sugden’s The Community of Advantage in 2018 might very well turn out to be a landmark event in welfare economics. In the book, Sugden presents a highly original view on what the main lessons of behavioral economics should be for welfare analyses; a view that radically deviates from the libertarian paternalism underlying the Nudge literature and other views that have been put forward in behavioral welfare economics. All the prevailing versions of behavioral welfare economics somehow want to retain the normative authority of individuals’ preferences (or of a proper subset of individuals’ preferences; preferences that are not clearly flawed by cognitive errors and mistakes). As Sugden cogently argues, the evidence gathered in behavioral economics fails to sustain this deference to preferences. With his own opportunity criterion, Sugden proposes a break with this long-lived tradition in welfare economics. The radicality of Sugden’s view goes beyond this as he argues that the addressee of welfare analysis should not be a fictitious benevolent social planner, but rather citizens, as potential parties to mutually beneficial agreements. We are happy to present this Review Symposium issue on The Community of Advantage in which prominent scholars, all with different outlooks and predilections, comment on the book, prompting Sugden to clarify and sharpen his own views. We want to thank Douglas Bernheim, Geoffrey Brennan, Malte Dold, Hartmut Kliemt, Mozaffar Quizilbash, Mario Rizzo, Cass Sunstein, Johanna Thoma and Robert Sugden for their fine work. Many thanks also to our reviewers for their contribution. Our greatest gratitude goes to Constanze Binder, the guest editor of this Review Symposium. Without her relentless efforts, this issue would not have seen the light. What is more, Constanze’s meticulous comments on earlier drafts of the articles published in this issue surely helped in improving their focus and clarity. Sadly, personal circumstances prevented her from finishing her own contribution in time. We hope that she will publish her own contribution soon and shed her own light on The Community of Advantage.
In The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good Robert H. Frank practices what h... more In The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good Robert H. Frank practices what he preaches. Starting with just a handful of simple basic principles, he is not only able to shed an interesting new light on some of society’s most pressing problems, but also to propose (at least to some) contrarian solutions for them. Frank arrives at his analyses and his solutions not by exploring the properties of mathematical models but by cogent informal reasoning. This approach is exactly ...
Even though one of the founding aspirations of our field was to foster mutually beneficial exchan... more Even though one of the founding aspirations of our field was to foster mutually beneficial exchanges between economics and philosophy, economists never paid much attention to our work. Now that practicing economists are increasingly engaging in explicit methodological reflections, we can no longer comfort ourselves with the idea that economists are simply not interested in discussions of methodological issues. What is new on our side of the fence is that some of us commend economists not to be distracted by the sort of philosophical ideas we discuss in our work. While no one openly opposes this, it is clear that others in our field strongly disagree with this. I argue that what is ultimately at stake are different views on what philosophy of economics is all about, what it should be and what it should do. I also argue that these fundamental disagreements are better discussed openly than being kept under the carpet.
Health care systems are challenged in allocating scarce health care resources, which are typicall... more Health care systems are challenged in allocating scarce health care resources, which are typically insufficient to fulfil all health care wants and needs. One criterion for priority setting may be the 'acceptable health' approach, which suggests that society may want to assign higher priority to health benefits in people with "unacceptable" than in people with "acceptable" health. A level of acceptable health then serves as a reference point for priority setting. Empirical research has indicated that people may be able and willing to define health states as "unacceptable" or "acceptable", but little attention has been given to the normative implications of evaluating health benefits in relation to a reference level of acceptable health. The current paper aims to address this gap by relating insights from the distributive justice literature, i.e. the sufficientarian literature, to the acceptable health approach, as we argue that these approaches are related. We specifically focus on the implications of an 'acceptability' approach for priority weighting of health benefits, derived from sufficientarian reasoning and debates, and assess the moral implications of such weighting.
The new institutional economics offers one of the most exciting research agendas in economics tod... more The new institutional economics offers one of the most exciting research agendas in economics today. Yet can it really explain processes of economic change? Economic Evolution explores three of the main approaches within the new institutional economics: * the new theory of ...
Health care systems are challenged in allocating scarce health care resources, which are typicall... more Health care systems are challenged in allocating scarce health care resources, which are typically insufficient to fulfil all health care wants and needs. One criterion for priority setting may be the 'acceptable health' approach, which suggests that society may want to assign higher priority to health benefits in people with "unacceptable" than in people with "acceptable" health. A level of acceptable health then serves as a reference point for priority setting. Empirical research has indicated that people may be able and willing to define health states as "unacceptable" or "acceptable", but little attention has been given to the normative implications of evaluating health benefits in relation to a reference level of acceptable health. The current paper aims to address this gap by relating insights from the distributive justice literature, i.e. the sufficientarian literature, to the acceptable health approach, as we argue that these approaches are related. We specifically focus on the implications of an 'acceptability' approach for priority weighting of health benefits, derived from sufficientarian reasoning and debates, and assess the moral implications of such weighting.
Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence.
ABSTRACT The serious side of the Economics Made Fun genre stems from its mantra that people respo... more ABSTRACT The serious side of the Economics Made Fun genre stems from its mantra that people respond to incentives. As Levitt and Dubner put it, economists typically believe they can solve virtually all problems by designing a proper incentive scheme. What is not always sufficiently appreciated is that Levitt and Dubner argue that economists nowadays grant the existence of social and moral incentives, besides the standard economic ones. A glance at the relevant literature in academic economics confirms this. Although there is an ongoing debate in academic economics about the necessity and desirability of introducing social preferences in utility functions and also about the relative strengths of various sorts of preferences, economists increasingly take the existence of various sorts of incentives and motivations into account. The recognition of non-monetary incentives and of non-economic motivation makes the economic approach to policy making more comprehensive and flexible. But since there might be various kinds of interaction effects between different sorts of incentives and different sorts of motivations, it also vastly complicates devising optimal policy schemes. What Levitt and Dubner say almost in passing about the “strange nature” of incentives also reflects the present state of art in academic economics: while it is increasingly acknowledged that different sorts of incentives and different sorts of motivations might interact in various ways, little is still known about when, under what conditions, the one or the other interaction effect obtains. Yet knowledge of the latter is required to devise optimal incentive schemes. Thus even though Levitt and Dubner might be right that economists are quite confident that they can solve virtually all problems by devising optimal incentive schemes, it seems the limited understanding of incentives, motivations and their various interaction effects in present-day academic economics falls short of bolstering this confidence.
indeterminacy in the concept of voluntariness, the only way to proceed is to consider the plausib... more indeterminacy in the concept of voluntariness, the only way to proceed is to consider the plausibility of claims such as this: Where A agrees to transfer property to B and B has acted within his rights during the transaction, the transfer preserves justice. Or this: Where A agrees to transfer property to B and A’s assent is not given because there is no acceptable alternative, the transfer preserves justice. Spell them out, and neither proposition seems remotely plausible to me, but that’s because I believe that the law of property and its transfer is but one important part of the entire legal and economic institutional scheme, and that different possible total schemes should be evaluated instrumentally, by looking at the outcomes they produce. Be that as it may, the real contribution of the second half of Liberty, desert and the market is not to provide a correct account of the concept of voluntariness and draw normative conclusions from that. Rather it is a contribution to the critique of libertarian ideology, which has so far mostly focused on the use of the rhetoric of freedom and ownership. Olsaretti highlights the crucial role of the idea of voluntariness – as the key to the libertarian ‘principle of justice in transfer’ – and shows that the libertarian interpretation of this notion is not irresistible, and that libertarians therefore cannot help themselves to the plausible sounding rhetoric about the free market being just in virtue of being the domain of voluntary exchange.
Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics brings together contributions from eminent authors who, buil... more Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics brings together contributions from eminent authors who, building on Darwin’s own insights and on developments in evolutionary theory, offer challenging views on how economics can use evolutionary ideas effectively.
Page 132. Taking evolution seriously: what difference does it make for economics? Jack J. Vromen ... more Page 132. Taking evolution seriously: what difference does it make for economics? Jack J. Vromen Introduction The issue what relevance (if any) the theme of evolution has for economics can be tackled from several vantage points. ...
Erasmus journal for philosophy and economics, Jul 3, 2015
This interview was conducted by Willem van der Deijl and Vaios Koliofotis. Van der Deijl is a PhD... more This interview was conducted by Willem van der Deijl and Vaios Koliofotis. Van der Deijl is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE) and co-editor of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. Koliofotis is a PhD candidate at EIPE, specializing in evolutionary explanations of economic behaviour. Learning from the right neighbour: an interview with Jack Vromen JACK J. VROMEN (Heerlen, 1958) is professor of theoretical philosophy, with a special emphasis on the philosophy of economics, dean of the philosophy faculty at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and director (and co-founder) of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE). He earned master's degrees in economics and in philosophy of economics from the University of Tilburg, and a PhD in economics from the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Neil De Marchi. Vromen has a particular research interest in evolutionary thinking and economic methodology. He is the author of Economic evolution: an enquiry into the foundations of 'new institutional economics' (1995), and (co-)editor of numerous anthologies, including Institutions and the evolution of capitalism; implications of evolutionary economics (1999, with John Groenewegen), The social institutions of capitalism: evolution and design of social contracts (2003, with Hans van Oosterhout and Pursey Heugens), and most recently The economics of economists (2014, with Alessandro Lanteri). EJPE interviewed Jack Vromen about becoming a philosopher of economics, his interest in evolution and its relation to economics, and the role he has played in the formation of EIPE, a major centre for the study of philosophy of economics. In this interview Vromen explains why he believes biology is a discipline much closer to economics than many economists realize, why the concept of evolution is important for understanding economic processes and for the economic discipline, and also why evolutionary economics never became mainstream when many believed that it would. EJPE: You are an economist by training. How did you end up the dean of a philosophy faculty? JACK VROMEN: Well, I have to correct you there. I am not just an economist by training, I also did philosophy. In Tilburg University, there was the possibility of doing a double-degree program in philosophy of
The publication of Robert Sugden’s The Community of Advantage in 2018 might very well turn out to... more The publication of Robert Sugden’s The Community of Advantage in 2018 might very well turn out to be a landmark event in welfare economics. In the book, Sugden presents a highly original view on what the main lessons of behavioral economics should be for welfare analyses; a view that radically deviates from the libertarian paternalism underlying the Nudge literature and other views that have been put forward in behavioral welfare economics. All the prevailing versions of behavioral welfare economics somehow want to retain the normative authority of individuals’ preferences (or of a proper subset of individuals’ preferences; preferences that are not clearly flawed by cognitive errors and mistakes). As Sugden cogently argues, the evidence gathered in behavioral economics fails to sustain this deference to preferences. With his own opportunity criterion, Sugden proposes a break with this long-lived tradition in welfare economics. The radicality of Sugden’s view goes beyond this as he argues that the addressee of welfare analysis should not be a fictitious benevolent social planner, but rather citizens, as potential parties to mutually beneficial agreements. We are happy to present this Review Symposium issue on The Community of Advantage in which prominent scholars, all with different outlooks and predilections, comment on the book, prompting Sugden to clarify and sharpen his own views. We want to thank Douglas Bernheim, Geoffrey Brennan, Malte Dold, Hartmut Kliemt, Mozaffar Quizilbash, Mario Rizzo, Cass Sunstein, Johanna Thoma and Robert Sugden for their fine work. Many thanks also to our reviewers for their contribution. Our greatest gratitude goes to Constanze Binder, the guest editor of this Review Symposium. Without her relentless efforts, this issue would not have seen the light. What is more, Constanze’s meticulous comments on earlier drafts of the articles published in this issue surely helped in improving their focus and clarity. Sadly, personal circumstances prevented her from finishing her own contribution in time. We hope that she will publish her own contribution soon and shed her own light on The Community of Advantage.
In The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good Robert H. Frank practices what h... more In The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good Robert H. Frank practices what he preaches. Starting with just a handful of simple basic principles, he is not only able to shed an interesting new light on some of society’s most pressing problems, but also to propose (at least to some) contrarian solutions for them. Frank arrives at his analyses and his solutions not by exploring the properties of mathematical models but by cogent informal reasoning. This approach is exactly ...
Even though one of the founding aspirations of our field was to foster mutually beneficial exchan... more Even though one of the founding aspirations of our field was to foster mutually beneficial exchanges between economics and philosophy, economists never paid much attention to our work. Now that practicing economists are increasingly engaging in explicit methodological reflections, we can no longer comfort ourselves with the idea that economists are simply not interested in discussions of methodological issues. What is new on our side of the fence is that some of us commend economists not to be distracted by the sort of philosophical ideas we discuss in our work. While no one openly opposes this, it is clear that others in our field strongly disagree with this. I argue that what is ultimately at stake are different views on what philosophy of economics is all about, what it should be and what it should do. I also argue that these fundamental disagreements are better discussed openly than being kept under the carpet.
Health care systems are challenged in allocating scarce health care resources, which are typicall... more Health care systems are challenged in allocating scarce health care resources, which are typically insufficient to fulfil all health care wants and needs. One criterion for priority setting may be the 'acceptable health' approach, which suggests that society may want to assign higher priority to health benefits in people with "unacceptable" than in people with "acceptable" health. A level of acceptable health then serves as a reference point for priority setting. Empirical research has indicated that people may be able and willing to define health states as "unacceptable" or "acceptable", but little attention has been given to the normative implications of evaluating health benefits in relation to a reference level of acceptable health. The current paper aims to address this gap by relating insights from the distributive justice literature, i.e. the sufficientarian literature, to the acceptable health approach, as we argue that these approaches are related. We specifically focus on the implications of an 'acceptability' approach for priority weighting of health benefits, derived from sufficientarian reasoning and debates, and assess the moral implications of such weighting.
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