 Can welfare be measured with a preference-satisfaction index?Willem van der Deijl Journal of Economic Methodology, 2018, vol. 25, issue 2, 126-142 Abstract: Welfare in economics is generally conceived of in terms of the satisfaction of preferences, but a general, comparable index measure of welfare is generally not taken to be possible. In recent years, in response to the usage of measures of subjective well-being as indices of welfare in economics, a number of economists have started to develop measures of welfare based on preference-satisfaction. In order to evaluate the success of such measures, I formulate criteria of policy-relevance and theoretical success in the context of preference-satisfaction measures of welfare. I present a detailed case study of the methodological choices put forward in a prominent generalized proposal for measuring welfare through preferences recently published in the American Economic Review. I contrast this with an alternative welfare measure which also uses preferences to weight aspects of welfare: the ICECAP-A measure. I assess the methodology of both approaches in detail and argue that the two goals of a preference measure of welfare can only be satisfied at the expense of making a measure prohibitively costly. Date: 2018 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:25:y:2018:i:2:p:126-142 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2017.1413586 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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