Theories of well-being and well-being policy: a view from methodology

Roberto Fumagalli

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2021, vol. 28, issue 1, 124-133

Abstract: In the recent well-being literature, various theory-free accounts of well-being have been proposed to ground informative evaluations of policies’ welfare implications without relying on any specific theories of well-being. In this paper, I provide a methodological assessment of theory-free accounts and argue that, despite these accounts, grounding informative evaluations of policies’ welfare implications frequently requires policy makers to rely on specific theories of well-being. Policy makers should ground their evaluations of policies’ welfare implications on explicit specifications of what theories of well-being they rely on and should openly acknowledge the theory-dependent character of their evaluations rather than aiming to provide theory-free welfare evaluations.

Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:124-133

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DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2020.1868780

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