Utilitarian foundations for limited government are shaky insofar as they assume rational and consistent individuals. Recently economists’ assumption of rational actors has come under sustained attack. Behavioural economics has suggested that people are plagued by irrational biases and...

Utilitarian foundations for limited government are shaky insofar as they assume rational and consistent individuals. Recently economists’ assumption of rational actors has come under sustained attack. Behavioural economics has suggested that people are plagued by irrational biases and...

Most economic problems combining risk and equity have been studied under utilitarianism. As an alternative, we study consumption decisions under risk assuming a prioritarian social welfare function. Under a standard assumption about the utility function (i.e., decreasing absolute risk aversion),...