Philosophy of Economics

Edited by Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge University)
Assistant editor: Jack Wright (University of Gothenburg)
About this topic
Summary Philosophy of economics is a study of any philosophical issue that arises in connection with the discipline of economics. Currently it has three core areas: foundations, methodology and ethics. Foundations of economics encompass conceptual and metaphysical questions such as the nature of rationality and social ontology, seeking to clarify what we study when we study economics (preferences, individuals, institutions, societies etc?) and their properties and relations to each other. Methodology of economics, following on the traditional questions in philosophy of science, is concerned with the nature of knowledge that can be attained about the economy and its sources.  The ethical side of philosophy of economics is a study of normative issues such as justice, efficiency, equality, welfare, paternalism, coercion and such, that arise at the intersection of political philosophy and welfare economics.
Key works Daniel Hausman is responsible for kickstarting much of contemporary philosophy of economics. Hausman 2008 is a comprehensive encyclopedia article. Hausman 1984 is an anthology of classic essays from to J.S Mill and Marx to the present day. Hausman et al 2006 is a seminal study of normative assumptions in economics and their critical study. Hausman 1992 started and still informs many discussions in methodology of economics. Reiss 2009 presents an updated agenda. Mäki 2001 is a collection on the ontology of economics.
Introductions There is now a textbook in philosophy of economics: Reiss 2013. Other good introductions to philosophy of economics are just introductions to philosophy of social science: for example, Rosenberg 1988, Risjord 2014, and Elster 2007.
Related
Subcategories
See also
History/traditions: Philosophy of Economics

Contents
12908 found
Order:
1 — 50 / 12908
Material to categorize
  1. The Epistemic Impossibility of Economic Calculation.Panagiotis Karadimas - 2023 - Synthese 202 (6):1-22.
    Events regarding individuals’ preferences that do not always follow from standard measures such as “value of statistical life” or “quality-adjusted life years” as well as events that occur in some market-related settings which distort the information conveyed by price mechanisms, suggest that a notable chunk of what Hayek called “local knowledge” remains inaccessible by scientific tools and that only the individuals who interact in these local frameworks can have access to it. This casts serious doubt on the epistemic possibility of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. D'une morale de l'amour à une sociologie de la raison.André Lamouche - 1963 - Paris,: Dunod.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3. Dialektika konkrétního.Karel Kosík - 1963 - Praha,: Nakl. Československé akademie věd.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Every Man Has His Price.Sean Capener - 2023 - Philosophy Today 67 (4):889-905.
    Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy is organized around an exclusive disjunction of dignity or price, equality or equivalence. In his 1797 Doctrine of Right, however, Kant places enslaved black people on the wrong side of this disjunction when he speculates that their status as currency may offer insight into the origins of money. Recent work in black studies has begun to speculate on the link between blackness and money in modernity, and this paper draws attention to Kant’s role as an unlikely (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Good and bad justifications of analytical modelling.Robert Sugden - forthcoming - Journal of Economic Methodology:1-11.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Adam Smith reconsidered: history, liberty, and the foundations of modern politics.Erwin Dekker - 2023 - Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (4):352-355.
    Adam Smith has long been remembered as an economist, but the past decades have witnessed an ever-increasing recognition and discussion of his moral philosophy with renewed interest in his first maj...
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. Introduction to the INEM 2021 conference special issue.Malte Dold, C. Tyler DesRoches & Merve Burnazoglu - 2023 - Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (4):273-275.
    The International Network for Economic Method (INEM), in collaboration with College of Global Futures, Arizona State University (ASU), was honored to host the 15th Biennial Conference in Tempe, Ari...
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. Models on trial: antitrust experts face Daubert challenges.Edoardo Peruzzi - 2023 - Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (4):337-351.
    Economists are often called upon as expert witnesses by the parties involved in antitrust litigation. One challenge they may face in US federal courts is compliance with the Daubert standard of admissibility of expert testimony. The interplay between model applicability and the Daubert standard is analyzed, suggesting the importance of distinguishing between weak applicability claims, those that state that a model’s critical assumptions are shared by the target, and strong applicability claims, those that connect empirical models and quantitative market features. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. A contribution to scientific studies of norms in economics inspired by JN Keynes and Popper.Sina Badiei - 2023 - Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (4):290-309.
    This paper defends JN Keynes’s argument that normative economics can be objective. It begins by exploring Keynes’s view on the positive/normative distinction in economics. After discussing its originality and advantages, the paper recognizes that the Keynesian distinction does not explain the exact nature of the relationship between positive and normative economics. Thus, it tries to improve Keynes’s position using Popper’s contributions to economics. It shows that for Popper, advances in normative social science are the main steppingstone to resolving disagreements over (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Objectivity in economics and the problem of the individual.John B. Davis - 2023 - Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (4):276-289.
    This paper addresses objectivity in economics. It criticizes a closed science, ‘view from nowhere’ conception of economics and defends an open science, ‘view from somewhere’ conception of objective science. It ascribes the first conception to mainstream economics, associates it with its principle practices – reductionist modeling, formalization, limited interdisciplinarity, and value neutrality – and argues their foundation is the Homo economicus individual conception. Two problematic consequences of adopting this stance are: (i) value blindness regarding the range and complexity of human (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. Filosofia social.António da Silva - 1966 - Evora: Instituto de Estudos Superiores de Evora.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Socialfilosofiska uppsatser.Axel Hägerström - 1966 - Stockholm,: Bonnier.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. Markets, market algorithms, and algorithmic bias.Philippe van Basshuysen - 2022 - Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (4):310-321.
    Where economists previously viewed the market as arising from a ‘spontaneous order’, antithetical to design, they now design markets to achieve specific 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 identified: first, Hurwicz’s view of institutions as mechanisms, which should be designed to align incentives with social goals; and second, the notion of marketplaces – consisting of infrastructure and algorithms – which (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Fair equality of chances for prediction-based decisions.Michele Loi, Anders Herlitz & Hoda Heidari - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy:1-24.
    This article presents a fairness principle for evaluating decision-making based on predictions: a decision rule is unfair when the individuals directly impacted by the decisions who are equal with respect to the features that justify inequalities in outcomes do not have the same statistical prospects of being benefited or harmed by them, irrespective of their socially salient morally arbitrary traits. The principle can be used to evaluate prediction-based decision-making from the point of view of a wide range of antecedently specified (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Edgeworth’s Mathematization of Social Well-Being.Adrian K. Yee - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 103 (C):5-15.
    Francis Ysidro Edgeworth’s unduly neglected monograph New and Old Methods of Ethics (1877) advances a highly sophisticated and mathematized account of social well-being in the utilitarian tradition of his 19th-century contemporaries. This article illustrates how his usage of the ‘calculus of variations’ was combined with findings from empirical psychology and economic theory to construct a consequentialist axiological framework. A conclusion is drawn that Edgeworth is a methodological predecessor to several important methods, ideas, and issues that continue to be discussed in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Social Preferences: An Introduction to Behavioural Economics and Experimental Research.Egor Bronnikov - forthcoming - Journal of Economic Methodology:1-4.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. La Dialectique du concret.Karel Kosík - 1970 - Paris,: F. Maspero.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Limits of the Numerical: The Abuses and Uses of Quantification, ed. C. Newfield, A. Alexandrova and S. John. University of Chicago Press, 2022, 317 pages. [REVIEW]Kate Vredenburgh - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy:1-6.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making, Henrik Andersson and Anders Herlitz (ed.). Routledge, 2022, viii+269 pages. [REVIEW]Kangyu Wang & Campbell Brown - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy:1-6.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Ontological wars in economics: the return of supervenience.Alexandre Müller Fonseca - forthcoming - Journal of Economic Methodology:1-16.
    In this article, I contest Brian Epstein’s argument (2014) against the applicability of global supervenience to relate micro and macroeconomic properties. Epstein rejects supervenience via a causal-chain relation inside the macroeconomic set in his criticism. Accordingly, the rise of the macro set is fixed by a weather event without any mediation from the realm of microeconomics. As it stands, this idea would demonstrate the autonomy of macroeconomics from microeconomics. However, as I intend to argue, in Epstein’s weather-cases scenarios, the corresponding (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. Scienze umane e metodologia: Weber, Popper, Durkheim.Carlo Montaleone - 1975 - Milano: Cisalpino-La goliardica.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22. Przedmiot filozofii i jej rola społeczna: miejsce filozofii w teorii marksistowskiej.Jarosław Ładosz - 1975 - Warszawa : Książka i Wiedza,:
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. Zum Verhältnis von Philosophie und Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: e. Beitr. zur Kritik d. institutionellen Marxismus.Detlef Horster - 1976 - Hannover: SOAK-Verl..
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. A Theory of Subjective Well-Being, Mark Fabian. Oxford University Press, 2022, x + 305 pages. [REVIEW]Gil Hersch - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):528-532.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. The Tragic Science: How Economists Cause Harm (even as They Aspire to Do Good). George F. DeMartino. University of Chicago Press. xi + 265 pages. [REVIEW]Lukas Beck - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):522-527.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. Continuity and catastrophic risk – CORRIGENDUM.H. Orri Stefánsson - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):533-534.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27. Is luxury tax justifiable?Hyunseop Kim - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):446-467.
    This paper examines whether, and if so when, luxury tax is justifiable. After a characterization of luxury tax, I critically examine several arguments that have been or can be made in defence of luxury tax, including Ng’s diamond good argument and a variation of Frank’s positional good argument. I put forward an alternative, expressive argument, according to which luxury tax can help to create and sustain social norms that discourage conspicuous luxury consumption and display of wealth. I explain several ways (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Revisiting variable-value population principles.Walter Bossert, Susumu Cato & Kohei Kamaga - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):468-484.
    We examine a general class of variable-value population principles. Our particular focus is on the extent to which such principles can avoid the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. We show that if a mild limit property is imposed, avoidance of the repugnant conclusion implies the sadistic conclusion. This result generalizes earlier observations by showing that they apply to a substantially larger class of principles. Our second theorem states that, under the limit property, the axiom of mere addition also conflicts with avoidance (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  29. Reply to Aaron: How people respond to the Asymmetry is an empirical question.Dean Spears - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):514-515.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. Reply to Spears’s ‘The Asymmetry of Population Ethics’.Jonas H. Aaron - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):507-513.
    Is the procreation asymmetry intuitively supported? According to a recent article in this journal, an experimental study suggests the opposite. Dean Spears (2020) claims that nearly three-quarters of participants report that there is a reason to create a person just because that person’s life would be happy. In reply, I argue that various confounding factors render the study internally invalid. More generally, I show how one might come to adopt the procreation asymmetry for the wrong reasons by misinterpreting one’s intuitions.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  31. Why we need future generations: a defence of direct intergenerational reciprocity.Fausto Corvino - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):395-422.
    In this article I argue that the non-reciprocity problem does not apply to intergenerational justice. Future generations impact, here and now, on the well-being of people now living. I firstly illustrate the economic-synchronic model of direct intergenerational reciprocity (DIR): future generations allow people now living to maintain the economic system future-oriented and capital-preserving. The rational choice for people now living is to guarantee transgenerational sufficiency to future generations. I then analyse the axiological-synchronic model of DIR: future generations give meaning and (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  32. Weighted sufficientarianisms: Carl Knight on the excessiveness objection.Dick Timmer - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):494-506.
    Carl Knight argues that lexical sufficientarianism, which holds that sufficientarian concerns should have lexical priority over other distributive goals, is ‘excessive’ in many distinct ways and that sufficientarians should either defend weighted sufficientarianism or become prioritarians. In this article, I distinguish three types of weighted sufficientarianism and propose a weighted sufficientarian view that meets the excessiveness objection and is preferable to both Knight’s proposal and prioritarianism. More specifically, I defend a multi-threshold view which gives weighted priority to benefits directly above (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  33. The Econ within or the Econ above? On the plausibility of preference purification.Lukas Beck - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):423-445.
    Scholars disagree about the plausibility of preference purification. Some see it as a familiar phenomenon. Others denounce it as conceptually incoherent, postulating that it relies on the psychologically implausible assumption of an inner rational agent. I argue that different notions of rationality can be leveraged to advance the debate: procedural rationality and structural rationality. I explicate how structural rationality, in contrast to procedural rationality, allows us to offer an account of the guiding idea behind preference purification that avoids inner rational (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  34. Vote markets, democracy and relational egalitarianism.Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):373-394.
    This paper expounds and defends a relational egalitarian account of the moral wrongfulness of vote markets according to which such markets are incompatible with our relating to one another as equals qua people with views on what we should collectively decide. Two features of this account are especially interesting. First, it shows why vote markets are objectionable even in cases where standard objections to them, such as the complaint that they result in inequality in opportunity for political influence across rich (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35. The utility of goods or actions? A neurophilosophical assessment of a recent neuroeconomic controversy.Enrico Petracca - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):351-372.
    The paper provides a neurophilosophical assessment of a controversy between two neuroeconomic models that compete to identify the putative object of neural utility: goods or actions. We raise two objections to the common view that sees the ‘good-based’ model prevailing over the ‘action-based’ model. First, we suggest extending neuroeconomic model discrimination to all of the models’ neurophilosophical assumptions, showing that action-based assumptions are necessary to explain real-world value-based decisions. Second, we show that the good-based model’s presumption of introducing a normative (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Comparing Rubin and Pearl’s causal modelling frameworks: a commentary on Markus (2021).Naftali Weinberger - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (3):485-493.
    Markus (2021) argues that the causal modelling frameworks of Pearl and Rubin are not ‘strongly equivalent’, in the sense of saying ‘the same thing in different ways’. Here I rebut Markus’ arguments against strong equivalence. The differences between the frameworks are best illuminated not by appeal to their causal semantics, but rather reflect pragmatic modelling choices.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. Modern Monetary Theory and Distributive Justice.Justin P. Holt - 2023 - Springer Verlag.
    Modern Monetary Theory and Distributive Justice shows how the macroeconomic framework called modern money theory (MMT) is relevant to the field of political philosophy called distributive justice. Many of the macroeconomic assumptions of distributive justice are unstated and unexamined. The framework of MMT illuminates these assumptions and provides an alternative vision of distributive justice analysis and prescriptions. In particular, MMT holds that modern money is a nominal state issued token (fiat), there is a distinction between nominal assets and real assets, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38. The genetic lottery why DNA matters for social equality.Jonathan M. Kaplan - forthcoming - Journal of Economic Methodology:1-6.
  39. Signs of Character: A Signalling Model of Hume's Theory of Moral and Immoral Actions.Ahmer Tarar - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy:1-25.
    In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume argues that morality pertains primarily to character, and that actions have moral content only to the extent that they signal good or bad character. I formalize his signalling theory of moral/immoral actions using simple game-theoretic models. Conditions exist under which there is a separating equilibrium in which actions do indeed credibly signal character, but conditions also exist in which there is only a pooling or semi-separating equilibrium. A tradeoff is identified between the signalling (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40. Adaptive preferences, self-expression and preference-based freedom rankings.Annalisa Costella - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy:1-22.
    If preference-based freedom rankings are based on all-things-considered preferences, they risk judging phenomena of adaptive preferences as freedom enhancing. As a remedy, it has been suggested to base preference-based freedom rankings on reasonable preferences. But this approach is also problematic. This article argues that the quest for a remedy is unnecessary. All-things-considered preferences retain information on whether the availability of an option contributes to the value that freedom has for a person’s self-expression. If preference-based freedom rankings use all-things-considered preferences to (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41. Can heterodox economics make a difference? Conversations with key thinkers.Danielle Guizzo - forthcoming - Journal of Economic Methodology:1-4.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  42. Permissible preference purification: on context-dependent choices and decisive welfare judgements in behavioural welfare economics.Måns Abrahamson - forthcoming - Journal of Economic Methodology:1-19.
    Behavioural welfare economics has lately been challenged on account of its use of the satisfaction of true preferences as a normative criterion. The critique contests what is taken to be an implicit assumption in the literature, namely that true preferences are context-independent. This assumption is considered not only unjustified in the behavioural welfare economics literature but unjustifiable – true preferences are argued to be, at least sometimes, context-dependent. This article explores the implications of this ‘critique of the inner rational agent’. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43. Mut zur konkreten Utopie: Alternativen zur herrschenden Ökonomie.Joachim Beerhorst (ed.) - 2003 - Hannover: Offizin.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. Philosophy of Economics, History of.Byron Kaldis - 2013 - In Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences. pp. 701-778.
    This encyclopedia is the first of its kind in bringing together philosophy and the social sciences. It is not only about the philosophy of the social sciences but, going beyond that, it is also about the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences. The subject of this encyclopedia is purposefully multi- and inter-disciplinary. Knowledge boundaries are both delineated and crossed over. The goal is to convey a clear sense of how philosophy looks at the social sciences and to mark out (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  45. Falsafa va izhtimoiĭ taraqqiët: ilmiĭ konferent︠s︡ii︠a︡ materiallari, 21-22 fevral 2008 ĭil.A. Ŭtamurodov & N. A. Shermukhamedova (eds.) - 2008 - Toshkent: Ŭzbekiston.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  46. Social Science, Policy and Democracy.Johanna Thoma - forthcoming - Philosophy and Public Affairs.
    This paper argues that there is a neglected democratic challenge for policy-relevant social science that existing accounts of the relationship between science and democracy fail to address. It is widely acknowledged that policy-relevant social science is value-laden in a number of ways. To reconcile this with democracy, it has been proposed that the values that enter social science need to be democratically aligned or legitimated in some way to guard against a democratically problematic technocracy. But where the value judgements that (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  47. Solving Social Dilemmas: Ethics, Politics and Prosperity, Roger Congleton. Oxford University Press, 2022, xvi + 451 pages. [REVIEW]Daniel Halliday - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy:1-6.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  48. Entropology in the Philosophy of Georges Bataille.Linartas Tuomas - 2023 - Filosofija. Sociologija 34 (3).
    In this article, the notion of entropology introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss is applied and developed in the context of Georges Bataille’s anthropological philosophy: Bataille’s project is defined as entropological. Four philosophical vectors are chosen for this: the theory of general economy, the concept of decay, the idea of extinction and the notion of inhumanism. The theory of general economy allows us to understand the immanent terrestrial nature of humanity and the negative – entropic – side of the capitalist economy. The (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  49. Die Optimierungsfalle: Philosophie einer humanen Ökonomie.Julian Nida-Rümelin - 2011 - München: Irisiana.
    ”Der ökonomische Markt ist nicht moralfrei“, sagt der angesehene Philosoph Julian Nida-Rümelin und präsentiert sein Modell einer humanen Ökonomie. Er glaubt an eine gut funktionierende Wirtschaftsordnung, die menschengerecht und nachhaltig ausgerichtet ist. Dabei sieht er darin keineswegs eine Utopie, sondern vielmehr eine praktikable Form, die unseren Alltag positiv verändern kann. Dieses Buch richtet sich an diejenigen, die über den Tag hinausdenken wollen, die über die Kritik an dem einen oder anderen gravierenden Fehlverhalten ökonomischer Akteure hinaus eine ethische Perspektive gewinnen wollen, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  50. Reconfiguring essential and discretionary public goods.Friedemann Https://Orcidorg Bieber & Maurits Https://Orcidorg de Jongh - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy:1-22.
    When is state coercion for the provision of public goods justified? And how should the social surplus of public goods be distributed? Philosophers approach these questions by distinguishing between essential and discretionary public goods. This article explains the intractability of this distinction, and presents two upshots. First, if governments provide configurations of public goods that simultaneously serve essential and discretionary purposes, the scope for justifiable complaints by honest holdouts is narrower than commonly assumed. Second, however, claims to distributive fairness in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 12908