Robert Sugden has recently elaborated upon the case for a normative standard of freedom as "opportunity" that is supposed to cope with the problem of how to realign normative economics - with its traditional rational choice orientation - with behavioral economics. His standard, though,...

Normative reasoning in welfare economics and social contract theory usually presumes invariable, context-independent individual preferences. Following recent work particularly in behavioral economics this assumption is difficult to defend. This paper therefore explores what can be said about...

Public choice theory has originally been motivated by the need to correct the asymmetry, widespread in traditional welfare economics, between the motivational assumptions of market participants and policymakers: Those who played the game of politics should also be considered rational and...

Explaining individual behavior in politics should rely on the same motivational assumptions as explaining behavior in the market: That’s what Political Economy, understood as the application of economics to the study of political processes, is all about. In its standard variant, those who...