L'estimation des préférences individuelles pour la décision publique. Problèmes, paradoxes, enjeux

Antoinette Baujard

Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) from Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS

Abstract: A public decision maker needs to decide to allocate some subsidy towards the conditions for public transportation or for private transportation. If she wants to improve the collective welfare of the community based on the individual preferences between public and private transportation, she needs to learn about the latter. A possible way to infer individual preferences lies in the revealed preference theory. With Saaris's technique of probability calculus, it becomes possible to study how much information is reliable for plausible assumptions about the conditions of data observations. We conclude that public decision makers may hardly get the relevant welfarist information to circumvent the problem raised by the lack of independence condition. This counter-example provides an operational argument against the use of strict technical welfarism in public economics.

Keywords: Welfarism; non-welfarism; public decision; information basis for public decision; revealed preference theory; probability calculus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 D63 H40 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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