Citizen Knowledge & the debate on information in welfare economics in perspective. Beyond the True-False and the Positive-Normative Entanglements

Antoinette Baujard ()
Additional contact information
Antoinette Baujard: Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne, CNRS, Université Lyon 2, emlyon, GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne UMR 5824, F-42023, Saint-Etienne, France

No 2421, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: This paper shows how the debate on information in Welfare Economics is enriched from the perspective of Lisa Herzog’s thesis on citizen knowledge, and conversely. First, the two sources of information for welfare enhancing public decisions, individual utilities and knowledge, need articulated justification, insofar as knowledge may be used to revise individual utilities. The process of preference revisions implicitly assumes the coincidence between knowledge and truth, but there are compelling arguments why this assumption should be debated. Second, public decisions are ultimately based on an additional third component of information: collective ethical norms. They are decisive, but their legitimacy is conditional to their transparency in the debate between experts and citizens. Transparency on which knowledge is judged relevant hence constitutes a minimal condition for the design of democratic infrastructures involving public decision making.

Keywords: Knowledge; Information; Welfarism; Demarcation; True-False demarcation; positive normative demarcation; Experts; Citizens; Democratic infrastructures of knowledge; Public decision-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A10 B41 D60 D70 D80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2024/2421.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gat:wpaper:2421

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nelly Wirth ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).