Welfare economics relies on consequentialism. Whether a public action is good or bad is then determined by the consequences for people, rather than for example by the extent to which it infringes on others’ rights. Yet, many philosophers have questioned this assumption. The present note...

The conventional rational voter model has problems explaining why people vote, since the costs typically exceed the expected benefits. This paper presents Swedish survey evidence suggesting that people vote based on a combination of instrumental and expressive motives, and that people are...

We test the proposition that individuals may experience a self-control conflict between short-term temptation to be selfish and better judgment to act pro-socially. Using a dictator game and a public goods game, we manipulated the likelihood that individuals identified self-control conflict, and...

This survey paper has three themes; a microeconomic analysis of institutions, an institutional analysis of microeconomics, and a discussion on the scope for an "institutional microeconomics" that takes insights from psychology and older institutional theory into account. Institutions are defined...

This paper discusses the standard welfare economics assumption anthropocentric welfarism, i.e. that only human well-being counts intrinsically. New survey evidence from a representative sample in Sweden is presented, indicating that anthropocentrism is strongly rejected, on average. However,...

Swedish survey-evidence indicates that variables reflecting self-interest are important in explaining people’s preferred speed limits, and that political preferences adapt to technological development. Drivers of cars that are newer (and hence safer), bigger, and with better high-speed...

This paper analyses normative implications of relaxing the conventional welfare economics assumptions anthropocentrism and welfarism, i.e. that only human well-being counts intrinsically, combined with various types of non-selfish individual preferences. Social decision rules are derived for the...

The social dilemma may contain, within the individual, a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and better judgment to cooperate. Examining the argument from the perspective of temptation, we pair the public good game with treatments that vary the degree to which money is abstract...

When facing the opportunity to allocate resources between oneself and others, individuals may experience a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and preferences to act pro-socially. We explore the domain of conditional cooperation, and we test the hypothesis that increased...

This paper analyzes the standard welfare economics assumption of anthropocentric welfarism, i.e., that only human well-being counts intrinsically. Alternatives where animal welfare matters intrinsically are explored theoretically, based on moral philosophical literature, and empirically where...