ABSTRACT

Behavioral welfare economics (BWE) assigns different roles to preferences than either non-behavioral forms of welfare economics or theories outside of the domain of welfare economics. In particular, BWE differs from other forms of welfare economics in its attempt to distinguish welfare-relevant from welfare-irrelevant subjective attitudes based on some notion of deliberation error. Based on recent arguments for the purpose-dependence of the interpretation of preferences, I argue that a functionalist-dispositional understanding of preference is not sufficient for BWE. Instead, I distinguish two levels of functional analysis – algebraic and algorithmic – and argued that it is the algorithmic level, capturing the relevant mental processes and representations producing the observed behavior, that is required for BWE.

摘要

行为福利经济学 (BWE) 赋予偏好不同的角色，而不是福利经济学的非行为形式或福利经济学领域之外的理论。特别是，BWE 与其他形式的福利经济学的不同之处在于，它试图基于某种深思熟虑的错误概念来区分与福利相关的主观态度和与福利无关的主观态度。基于最近关于偏好解释的目的依赖性的论点，我认为功能主义倾向性的偏好理解对于 BWE 来说是不够的。相反，我区分了函数分析的两个层次——代数和算法——并认为这是算法层次，捕捉产生观察到的行为的相关心理过程和表征，这是 BWE 所必需的。