Hedonic adaptation and the role of decision and experience utility in public policy

Many economists are becoming supportive of ‘soft’ paternalistic interventions that help people to avoid common decision errors without curtailing individual autonomy. To identify when such interventions could be beneficial, and to assess their success, requires a welfare criterion. However, traditional preference or choice-based criteria cannot serve this function because they assume that whatever people choose makes them better off. An alternative criterion that bases welfare on happiness rather than choice avoids this problem but has several of its own drawbacks. Most notably, people often adapt to serious chronic health conditions, and exhibit high levels of happiness, even though both those with and those without the condition agree that it is much preferable to be healthy. After reviewing different lines of research that shed light on the pros and cons of these alternative welfare criteria, we argue that no simple criterion based on either concept can surmount these problems. Instead, evaluations of welfare will inevitably have to be informed by a combination of both approaches, patched together in a fashion that depends on the specific context.     

S. Budge. Vom theoretischen Nominalismus,Jahrbücher für National Oekonomie und Statistik” December 1919

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S. Budge. Vom theoretischen Nominalismus, Jahrbücher für National Oekonomie und Statistik December 1919Waren- oder Anweisungstheorie des Geldes. Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik Band 46, Heft 3

     

De Vreemde Oosterlingen en de lijfsdwang

Antwoord aau Mr. F. Alting Mees (zie Economist Februari en Maart).     

Koloniale kroniek

Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje's Mekka en andere geschriften.     

Energiesparen: Warum wird Beratung gefördert?

Home renovation is generally asserted to be a highly effective means to increase residential energy efficiency and thereby contribute to climate protection from reduced energy consumption. As part of a larger package of measures in the residential sector, the German government is consequently providing financial support for home audits from recognized energy experts who provide advice on retrofitting options. To date, the question concerning the effectiveness these home audits has largely escaped empirical scrutiny. The present paper fills this void by providing evidence for considerable free-rider effects within the home audit program, yielding serious reservations with respect to both the effectiveness of the program and its fiscal costs. Moreover, given the substantial differences between the gross- and net effects of home audits that are revealed by this analysis, the program’s contribution to climate protection and thereby the central justification for the associated government outlays is called into question. The social benefit of the program emerges only from those retrofits that would not have been undertaken in the absence of the home audit.