The Apple Tree

Ahmed Anwar ()

Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series from Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh

Abstract: Consider an individual whose preferences are changing over time. How do we assess her welfare? We argue that this is an empirically relevant question as preferences are constantly changing over time if the agent has a bias towards the present. We present a simple example where preferences are changing over time (the apple tree) and use it to aid our discussion of welfare. We critically assess the approach that focuses on the decision maker (revealed preference) and the one that ignores the decision maker (long-run self) with reference to some recent literature. Finally, we look at some of the problems that arise when we consider a sovereign individual who aggregates her changing preferences.

Pages: 9
Date: 2007-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ed.ac.uk/papers/id164_esedps.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:edn:esedps:164

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series from Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh 31 Buccleuch Place, EH8 9JT, Edinburgh. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Research Office ().