This paper challenges the QALY maximizing approach to rationing health care on the grounds of the consequentialist (and sometimes approximately utilitarian) moral framework on which it is based. An alternative methodological approach is suggested and, in addition to consequences, four normative...

The paper argues for the relevance of procedural justice to social choice and presents supporting evidence from primary data on voter attitudes. A preliminary section proposes and discusses five propositions that indicate the potential value and significance of processes for social choice....

The paper argues that the problem of obesity can usefully be seen as illustrating a new kind of market failure. At the heart of such failures is the emergence of a sub-optimal choice environment which, though derived from a large number of small individual optimising decisions, is not the choice...

This paper addresses the claim that L. J. Savage's account of subjective utility theory models beliefs for all rational agents. Proposals for a two-dimensional model of belief are discussed and sources of criticism of subjective utility theory as a theory of rational choice are categorized. A...

Drawing on the three key relations in the capabilities approach (Sen, 1985) to welfare economics and using panel data from the English Longitudinal Survey of Aging, this paper illustrates how the capabilities approach to welfare economics can be used to understand wellbeing in older age....

The paper contributes to the operationalisation of the capabilities approach to welfare economics by developing and analyzing data on the freedoms of adults in Argentina. Specifically, it reports on the development and delivery of a survey instrument for measuring capabilities, calculates for...

The Handbook of Rational and Social Choice provides an overview of issues arising in work on the foundations of decision theory and social choice over the past three decades. Drawing on work by economic theorists mainly, but also with contributions from political science, philosophy and...