Monday, May 14, 2007

The New Formalism?

Bernheim and Rangel have a paper out in the current edition of the AER on choice-theoretic foundations for behavioural welfare economics. According to these authors, standard welfare analysis is based on choice, not on utility or preferences. And they have devised a new approach to welfare analysis where individuals make inconsistent choices.

See a version of the paper here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's a les technical discussion about choice-based welfare analysis by Matthew Rabin and Botond Koszegi (2007):

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~botond/mistakeschicago.pdf

Anonymous said...

Rabin and Koszegi's contribution is also in the current edition of the AER. I think the AER version might be more technical.