This working paper is a lightly edited version of two chapters of a book that I am currently writing. This book will present and defend a form of normative economics that conserves the main insights of the liberal tradition of classical and neoclassical economics but does not depend on strong...

Contemporary mainstream normative economists assess policies in terms of their capacities to satisfy preferences, though most would concede that other factors such as freedom, rights, and justice are also relevant. Why should policy be responsive to preferences? This essay argues that the best...

Is Friedrich von Hayek in some specific, perhaps paradoxical, way a classical liberal paternalist? My answer will be an unsatisfying yes and no depending not only on my interpretation of Hayek, but also on the manifold interpretations one can give to the concepts of paternalism and classical...

The paper deals with impulsive consumption and highlights the roles that cognitive and motivational aspects of reflexive thought (namely self-control and self-image motives, respectively) play in intertemporal decisions. While self-control inhibits individuals from consuming impulsively,...

This paper examines the normative principles that should guide policies aimed at promoting happiness or, more broadly, well-being. After arguing that well-being policy is both legitimate and necessary, we lay out a case for pragmatic subjectivism: given widely accepted principles of respect for...

While research on subjective well-being abounds, comparatively little thought has been given to its practical policy implications. Two approaches to derive policy advice have emerged in the literature: One is organized in terms of the idea to maximize a hedonic social welfare function, the other...

Empirical data show that firms tend to improve their ranking in the productivity distribution over time. A stickyprice model with firm-level productivity growth fits this data and predicts that the optimal long-run inflation rate is positive and between 1.5% and 2% per year. In contrast, the...

This paper advances a structural inter-temporal model of labour supply that is able to simulate the dynamics of labour supply in a continuous setting and to circumvent two main drawbacks of most of the existing models. The first limitation is the inability to incorporate individual heterogeneity...