The Merits of Merit Wants

Richard Sturn

A chapter in Individual and Collective Choice and Social Welfare, 2015, pp 289-308 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Merit wants are a multi-faceted concept cutting through a complex array of problems associated with different levels of analysis. They are considered in this paper as a shorthand notion for concerns that are respectable and important, assuming a broadly individualist conception of welfare. So why are merit wants not a firmly established part of modern normative economics, given that simplifying, but still meaningful notions are suitable as conceptual starting point for a research program? In this paper I try to link the answer to this question with making explicit three levels of problems (limits of reason, higher order preferences, collective choice) which may be useful to locate and scrutinize various interpretations of and approaches to merit wants.

Keywords: Bounded rationality; Communal preferences; Higher order preferences; Merit wants/goods; Social choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:stcchp:978-3-662-46439-7_16

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-46439-7_16

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