The Pigou-Dalton (PD) principle recommends a non-leaky, non-rank-switching transfer of goods from someone with more goods to someone with less. This Article defends the PD principle as an aspect of distributive justice — enabling the comparison of two distributions, neither completely equal,...

Can we measure inequity? Can we arrive at a number or numbers capturing the extent to which a given society is equitable or inequitable? Sometimes such questions are answered with a “no”: equity is a qualitative, non-numerical consideration. This Article offers a different perspective. The...

Prioritarianism is a distinctive moral view. Outcomes are ranked according to the sum of concavely transformed well-being numbers—by contrast with utilitarianism, which simply adds up well-being. Thus, unlike utilitarians, prioritarians give extra moral weight to the well-being of the worse...

This is a Commentary on Jason Johnston's important article, "A Game Theoretic Analysis of Alternative Institutions for Regulatory Cost-Benefit Analysis." Eric Posner and I have argued in prior work that cost-benefit analysis (CBA) should be understood as a welfarist decision procedure. Our...

Cost-benefit analysis is a widely used governmental evaluation tool, though academics remain skeptical. This volume gathers prominent contributors from law, economics and philosophy for discussion of cost-benefit analysis, specifically its moral foundations, applications,and limitations....

Does individual desert matter for distributive justice? Is it relevant, for purposes of justice, that the pattern of distribution of justice’s “currency” (be it well-being, resources, preference-satisfaction, capabilities, or something else) is aligned in one or another way with the...

What are the methodologies for assessing and improving governmental policy in light of well-being? The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of this topic. The contributors draw from welfare economics, moral philosophy, and...

“Prioritarianism” is an ethical theory that gives extra weight to the well-being of the worse off. Prioritarianism has been much discussed in the philosophical literature over the last thirty years, where it has emerged as an important competitor to utilitarianism. Like utilitarianism,...

The social value of risk reduction (SVRR) is the marginal social value of reducing an individual’s fatality risk, as measured by some social welfare function (SWF). This is the linchpin concept for applying social welfare functions to the domain of fatality risk regulation. This Article...

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a monetary measure of the harms from carbon emission. Specifically, it is the reduction in current consumption that produces a loss in social welfare equivalent to that caused by the emission of a ton of CO2. The standard approach is to calculate the SCC using...