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Robert Sugden (2018. The Community of Advantage: A Behavioural Economist’s Defence of the Market. Oxford University Press) offers an alternative account for normative economics grounded in the view that it is in each individual’s interest to have more opportunity rather than less, irrespective of whether their decisions reveal well-ordered preferences. Our paper characterizes Sugden’s proposal as a step in the right direction, but as insufficient. His opportunity criterion does not go far enough in taking insights from psychology seriously. Sugden defends an idea of agency understood as a person’s subjective sense of being in control of her actions. To realize this sense of being in control, we argue that a focus on opportunity-only is problematic; people also need agentic capabilities. We use self-determination theory (SDT) to develop a subjective account of agency that is grounded in psychological science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutions are crucial for shaping society and its values and behaviors, especially in the context of the global environmental crisis. Institutions can play a significant role in enhancing the adaptive capacity of society to climate change, as emphasized by the IPCC reports. Char is a land-form that is highly vulnerable to climate change and related events. Char is a land-form that is highly vulnerable to climate change and related events. According to the Human Development Report (Assam Human Development Report 2014. Government of Assam, 2014), char dwellers are the poorest and the most vulnerable communities in Assam. This paper aims to understand how the institutions of the char areas of Assam, including both formal and informal institutions can foster the adaptive capacity of the communities residing in these vulnerable locations. To achieve this goal, we apply the adaptive capacity wheel (ACW), a widely accepted approach to determine the quality of institutions in the literature of institutional economics. ACW is a normative economic study, based on value judgments, and we interviewed 49 stakeholders of a total of 16 char villages of Assam. Our study reveals the characteristics and challenges of institutions of the char areas in Assam. It emphasizes the fact that about certain dimensions, like the institutions' capacity to generate resources, support modifications to their structure and pattern, improve the ability to learn, and ensure fairness in the governance system, the char institutions of Assam's various regions require extra attention. These areas are crucial for the people's resilience to severe climate impacts. In addition to identifying regional variations in institutional quality, our research makes recommendations for institutional enhancements aimed at boosting societal adaptability. It is also argued that the study can be extended to other sensitive areas of the world with similar characteristics to char. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We mobilise contemporary philosophy of science to further clarify observations on economic modelling made by Gilboa et al. (2023). We adopt a normative stance towards these modelling practices to identify the extent to which they are epistemically justified. Our message is simple: many of the distinctions proposed by Gilboa et al. (2023) are useful, but without the proper qualifications, too much flexibility in choosing the right interpretation risks downplaying the crucial role that empirical evidence should play in any modelling endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioural welfare economics has lately been challenged on account of its use of the satisfaction of true preferences as a normative criterion. The critique contests what is taken to be an implicit assumption in the literature, namely that true preferences are context-independent. This assumption is considered not only unjustified in the behavioural welfare economics literature but unjustifiable – true preferences are argued to be, at least sometimes, context-dependent. This article explores the implications of this 'critique of the inner rational agent'. I argue that the critique does not support a wholesale shift away from the use of true preferences as an evaluative standard in normative economics; instead, the critique implies that behavioural welfare economists need to inquire into and establish the 'source' of particular context-dependent choices in individuals' decision-making. The source determines the permissibility of correcting individuals' context-dependent choices and can, in some situations, support decisive welfare judgements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the distinction between positive and normative economics in the context of tax economics. It explores how the study of behavioral economics and increased attention to tax evasion and enforcement complicate these distinctions. The article discusses various aspects of tax policy and government behavior, including the impact of tax cuts on corporate income, the role of behavioral biases in tax policy, and the use of notches and kinks in tax schedules. It also addresses the issue of taxpayer education and the trade-off between taxpayer privacy and tax enforcement. The author suggests that while behavioral anomalies may require some policy adjustments, the fundamental models of optimal taxation still hold. The article also explores the value of tax privacy and the potential impact of public tax disclosure on tax compliance. It discusses the effectiveness of different enforcement policies in reducing tax evasion and emphasizes the importance of tax economists behaving as scholars and prioritizing truth and accuracy in their research. The author highlights the potential bias in tax research due to data access granted by tax authorities and the need for transparency in policy recommendations. The article concludes by discussing the correlation between researchers' political views and their empirical investigations, emphasizing the importance of unbiased analysis in economics. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the relationship between social science, policy, and democracy, focusing on the challenges of value-laden social scientific indicators and their impact on policy decisions. It argues for greater value pluralism rather than democratic alignment as a solution, using the example of measuring the cost of living to illustrate how value judgments can lead to epistemic inequality and a lack of equal participation in public deliberation. The article proposes strategies such as publicly accessible dashboards and adjustable weightings of indicators to ensure greater value pluralism and democratic accountability. It also discusses the importance of transparency, accountability, and inclusivity in policy-relevant social science research, advocating for a more democratic and inclusive approach to policy-making through value pluralism. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Lumina (0123-4072) is the property of Universidad de Manizales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper defends JN Keynes’s argument that normative economics can be objective. It begins by exploring Keynes’s view on the positive/ normative distinction in economics. After discussing its originality and advantages, the paper recognizes that the Keynesian distinction does not explain the exact nature of the relationship between positive and normative economics. Thus, it tries to improve Keynes’s position using Popper’s contributions to economics. It shows that for Popper, advances in normative social science are the main steppingstone to resolving disagreements over the choice of the norms underlying the reform of social situations. The final two parts of the paper draw on the contributions of Keynes and Popper to the study of norms to explain why normative economics can more easily approach objectivity by concentrating on highly delimited topics. The last part relies on Popper’s concept of avoidable unhappiness to offer one method of restraining the tasks of normative economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper stresses the failure of 'economics' to predict and prevent repeated economic crises and the most critical topic of the environmental failure and ecological crises, founded also on economic theories and misconceived choices. The implication is a search for alternatives through an ontological-evolutionary-institutional approach and empirical investigations. The search for political 'normative economics', entity economics, accounting and information science copes with social and ecological-environmental problems, and systems science; it is necessary to keep always in mind these interactions for fully understand and correctly interpret the present 'social-economic reality'. The problem concerning environmental decisions goes beyond ontology and belongs to ethics. It must underline the debates on 'evolutionary ethics', not only related with 'environmental and ecological economics', the management of environment and reporting, but also with 'evolutionary ontology'; the new perspective affirms that 'existence', for instance, of a moral behavioral attitude, can reveal itself as a 'norm' thus relating ethics to ontology. General economists, entity economics theorists, as well as accountants and information scientists should be familiar with the potentials and limits of 'ontology', also for the ongoing expansion of computerization of scientific research in most of the scientific domains. The renewed interest, particularly in ontology, arouse specifically from systems scientists in constructing a wide variety of artificial intelligent systems. For its analysis, the study has been structured into two periods of time: until the middle of the 20th century and from that moment on. The paper ends by showing the new developments in information systems and their ontological approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this issue deal with the transformation from public finance to public economics at a theoretical and philosophical level in the mid-twentieth century. Our introduction situates these papers within their intellectual context. To do so, we provide a broad outline of the trajectory of the field beginning with the transformation of welfare economics. Acknowledging the structuring role of Richard Musgrave and James Buchanan for the field, the papers highlight the key role also played by Paul Samuelson in the transition to public economics. Moreover, they underscore how ethical issues were formalised into normative economics at this critical juncture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water resources systems analysis (WRSA) combines quantitative and qualitative methods informed by multiple scientific disciplines, serving many broad water-related societal goals such as providing safe drinking water and mitigating floods and other disasters. Critically, each of the pillars of WRSA are complementary and all are needed to advance WRSA. To ensure robust findings in specific cases while building WRSA process understanding, we pose the following questions to WRSA researchers: • Are the process representations in the model appropriate for the scope and time scale of the motivating problem?. [Extracted from the article]

Frank Knight was an enigmatic thinker: about economics, individual behavior more generally, ethics, epistemology, and a number of other subjects. However, his views on some topics often created tensions with his views on other topics. This paper will examine two of these Knightian tensions: his views on the relationship between homo economicus the actual human behavior and his views on the relationship between rational economic behavior and normative economics. It will be argued that Knight anticipated many of the anomalies identified by behavioral economics and yet did so while defending homo economicus to some degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarises the theoretical foundations, main approaches and current trends in the field of behavioural normative economics. It identifies bounded rationality and bounded willpower as the two core concepts that have motivated the field. Since the concepts allow for individual preferences to be context‐dependent and time‐inconsistent, they pose an intricate problem for standard welfare analysis. The article discusses the ways in which two prominent approaches – the preference purification approach and the opportunity approach – have tackled the problem. It argues that shortcomings in each of these approaches motivate an agency‐centric perspective. The article presents two concrete policy proposals of the agency‐centric approach. While this approach is promising, the article argues for pluralism in normative economics since an exclusive focus on agency can likely not do justice to the multifarious concerns that citizens hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contributions of economists have long included both positive explanations of how economic systems work and normative recommendations for how they could and should work better. In recent decades, economics has taken a strong empirical turn as well as having a greater appreciation of the importance of the complexities of real‐world human behaviour, institutions, the strengths and failures of markets, and interlinkages with other systems, including politics, technology, culture and the environment. This shift has also brought greater relevance and pragmatism to normative economics. While this shift towards evidence and pragmatism has been welcome, it does not in itself answer the core question of what exactly constitutes 'better', and for whom, and how to manage inevitable conflicts and trade‐offs in society. These have long been the core concerns of welfare economics. Yet, in the 1980s and 1990s, debates on welfare economics seemed to have become marginalised. The articles in this Fiscal Studies symposium engage with the question of how to revive normative questions as a central issue in economic scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An adequate normative economics – one that is consistent with recent developments in our discipline (and in philosophy and psychology) and that resonates with widely held moral intuitions – will have to address the following challenges. First, utility cannot be both the basis of our predictions of economic behaviour and the evaluation of the outcomes of this behaviour. Second, we need to conceive of individual well‐being and other desiderata in ways that are interpersonally comparable and that go beyond efficiency and fairness. Third, the representation of the economy as a 'morality‐free zone' (requiring that contracts, including employment contracts, are complete) must give way to a recognition of the unaccountable exercise of power by private actors, even in a perfectly competitive equilibrium, and the way that this may violate democratic principles and limit the freedom and compromise the dignity of other actors. Fourth, the commitment to 'liberal neutrality' (thereby sidestepping the evaluation of preferences) and the related assumption of 'unrestricted preferences' in mechanism design and public policy must be abandoned, making room for a concern about the nature of our preferences and the ways that institutions shape our values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Buchanan would have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2019. This serves as an inspiration to look at the future of public choice and the question of how much normativity public choice can bear. In our analysis we draw parallels between public choice and German ordoliberalism (and its source in the Freiburg School of Economics). We argue that the reception of ordoliberalism exemplifies easy-to-grasp pitfalls that should be taken seriously. We anchor the future agenda of public choice in a solid individualist perspective. Similar to ordoliberalism, public choice will have to clarify its relation to normative economics. The effects of rules and institutions and their working properties should be thoroughly analyzed empirically. The role of ideas is important for the normative foundation of both public choice/ constitutional economics and ordoliberalism, and is rooted in normative individualism. It provides a benchmark by which rules and institutions can be judged as favorable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book The Community of Advantage, Sugden proposes a form of normative economics that is almost free of the concept of preferences. Specifically, Sugden relies on the idea that everyone can accept the principle that more opportunities is better than less. Yet, this approach cannot be easily applied to the choice of economic reforms that fail to provide more opportunities for everyone. This paper complements an approach proposed by Sugden to deal with non-nested opportunity sets. We rely on the idea that people should take responsibility for the choices that were not endorsed before the reform takes place. In this perspective, a reform project is admissible if it allows people to stick to their initial choices and provides them with a rich set of opportunities (that is, the new opportunity regime must also satisfy Sugden's Strong Interactive Opportunity Criterion). As an illustration, we show how routine redistribution schemes can make free trade be preferred to autarky even if it does not provide more opportunities for everyone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is what we believe related to how we act? That depends on what we mean by 'believe'. On the one hand, there is what we're sure of: what our names are, where we were born, whether we are sitting in front of a screen. Surety, in this sense, is not uncommon — it does not imply Cartesian absolute certainty, from which no possible course of experience could dislodge us. But there are many things that we think that we are not sure of. For example, you might think that it will rain sometime this month, but not be sure that it will. Both what we're sure of and what we think have important normative connections to action. But the connections are quite different. This paper explores these issues with respect to assertion, inquiry, and decision making. We conclude by arguing that there is no theoretically significant notion of 'full belief' intermediate in strength between thinking and being sure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is what we believe related to how we act? That depends on what we mean by 'believe'. On the one hand, there is what we're sure of: what our names are, where we were born, whether we are sitting in front of a screen. Surety, in this sense, is not uncommon — it does not imply Cartesian absolute certainty, from which no possible course of experience could dislodge us. But there are many things that we think that we are not sure of. For example, you might think that it will rain sometime this month, but not be sure that it will. Both what we're sure of and what we think have important normative connections to action. But the connections are quite different. This paper explores these issues with respect to assertion, inquiry, and decision making. We conclude by arguing that there is no theoretically significant notion of 'full belief' intermediate in strength between thinking and being sure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare economics analyzes societal well-being based on individual levels of self-evaluated happiness or "utility." All human emotions, including what economists label as utility, are evolutionary creations, shaped by natural selection for the sole purpose of altering individuals' behavior in ways that maximize their relative reproductive success. Because of the evolutionary origins and nature of human motivations, welfare economics has little to say about societal well-being. While welfare economics is not useful for normative statements, it nonetheless provides a measure of the difficulties in implementing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I comment on Sunstein's paper proposing 'Hayekian behavioural economics'. In essence, Sunstein is merely renaming a familiar approach to normative economics, initiated in Sunstein and Thaler's seminal 2003 paper. I argue that this approach cannot fairly be described as in the spirit of Hayek's work. Sunstein's approach is based on a 'constructivist' conception of rationality that Hayek consistently criticized. Although both Hayek and Sunstein address 'knowledge problems', the two problems are fundamentally different. I develop what I claim are truly Hayekian critiques of Sunstein's claim that fuel economy mandates can be more Hayekian than carbon taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data privacy's ethos lies in protecting the individual from institutions. Increasingly, however, institutions are deploying privacy arguments in ways that harm individuals. Tech companies like Amazon, Meta (Facebook), and Alphabet (Google) wall off information from competitors in the name of privacy. Financial institutions under investigation just(hj withholding files from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by saying they must protect sensitive customer data. In these and other ways, the private sector is exploiting privacy to avoid competition and accountability. This Article highlights the breadth Qf privacy pretexts and uncouers their moral structure. Like most pretexts, there is an element Qf truth to the claims. But left unchallenged, they will paue a path contrary to privacy's ethos by blocking individuals' data allies-the digital helpers, competitors, and regulators who need access to personal data to advance people's interests. Addressing this moue requires recognizing and overcoming deep tensions in the fleld of pripacy. The field's normative relationship with economics and third-party access has become too strained. Although data privacy's roots are in guarding against access, its future depends on promoting allied access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the problem of the division of economics into positive and normative, as well as its reinterpretation due to the assumptions of the theory of deterministic chaos for economic phenomena and the functioning of the market. The research question is expressed as a doubt whether adopting idealistic postulates and the related value judgments in economics is anyway justified or useful if the phenomena under discussion turned out to be purely chaotic. The issue of the subject of investment activity was raised, paying attention to the historical outline of the constitution of the basic economic categories relevant to the economics of investment. The subject of the considerations was subordinated to the assumptions of the complexity economics and the theory of deterministic chaos, with some of their properties presented as arguments for the legitimacy of applying them to research on financial markets and the economic system. After introducing the classical division of economics into positive and normative, attention was drawn to the specific interpretation of this division in terms of the chaos theory. The legitimacy of this division was checked, while it was found that the high degree of uncertainty of the results in the chaotic dynamics limits the judgments absolutely sure, and therefore a greater importance should be given to the normative approach. The considerations have been extended by several observations pointing to open issues and postulates of reasearch procedures within the complexity economics applicable for investment decisions.

Sufficientarianism is a prominent approach to distributive justice in political philosophy and in policy analyses. However, it is virtually absent from the formal normative economics literature. We analyze sufficientarianism axiomatically in the context of the allocation of 0–1 normalized well‐being in society. We present three characterizations of the core sufficientarian criterion, which counts the number of agents who attain a "good enough" level of well‐being. The main characterization captures the "hybrid" nature of the criterion, which embodies at the same time a threshold around which the worst off in society is prioritized, and an indifference to equality in other regions. The other two characterizations relate sufficientarianism, respectively, to a liberal principle of noninterference and to a classic neutrality property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economics & Environment / Ekonomia i Środowisko is the property of Fundacja Ekonomistow Srodowiska i Zasobow Naturalnych and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article contributes to the debate on the role of normative values and political preferences among (publicly visible) economists in the United States. For this purpose, we conduct a social network analysis on the signatories of economist petitions, which we identify as one channel for economists to exert public influence. Our contribution is twofold: On the one hand, we provide an extended empirical basis for the debate on consensus in economics and the role of political preferences and normative values in economics. On the other hand, this article offers a viable tool to trace the normative charging of (prospective) economist petitions and economists based on the social structure of petition networks. The main empirical finding of our article is that there is a very strong partisan divide among petition-signing economists in the United States, which mirrors the cleavage within the U.S. political system. We also find that the bipartite partisan structure of the economist petition network increases with the political involvement of economists. This divide is particularly stark in the field of fiscal policy. A greater tendency towards consensus, in turn, can be found with respect to monetary policy, carbon pricing, immigration, free trade or market-based decision tools in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism" by Sebastian Edwards is a well-written book that explores the rise of the Chicago Boys and their influence on Chile's economic policies. The book discusses how the United States supported the training of economists, including the first cohort of students from Chile's Catholic University who studied at the University of Chicago. The Chicago Boys had little influence until they were invited to join the de facto government in 1973 under General Augusto Pinochet. Despite their many failures, their neoliberal policies survived and contributed to economic inequality and corruption, leading to the social uprising of October 2019. The book provides insights into Chile's recent history and the legacies of dictatorship and neoliberalism, but it could have included more perspectives from Latin America and a deeper analysis of the Chicago Boys' role before the coup. [Extracted from the article]

This study investigated the relationship between job satisfaction and work commitment among Dapitan City's hospitality industry employees. It used a descriptive research method utilizing a questionnaire as the principal tool for gathering data. Data were statistically treated using frequency, weighted mean, Mann-Whitney U-Test, Kruskal-Wallis H-Test, and Spearman Rank-Order Correlation. The study revealed that employees were satisfied with their salary (existence), work environment (relatedness), and the way they were mentored in the performance of their jobs (growth). Most of the employees were committed to their work as they identified that the establishment had a deep sense of personal meaning to them (affective); that, for now, choosing to remain in the organization is motivated by both necessity and desire (continuance); and the establishment deserves their loyalty (normative). A significant difference resulted in job satisfaction when analyzed according to civil status. Moreover, when analyzed according to educational attainment and employment status, a significant difference was identified in employees' work commitment. Finally, it was discovered that among hospitality industry employees in Dapitan City, job satisfaction and work commitment have a considerably high positive relationship. Hospitality industry stakeholders and employees are encouraged to support educational advancement and enhance management practices to minimize employee turnover. Legislators and policymakers are encouraged to enact policies and measures in line with the improvement and advancement of hospitality industry employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of the community mechanism that complements the market and power mechanisms in an economic system during an era of crisis, defined as a mechanism for resource allocation by which at least one person proposes voluntary cooperation, and the proposal is not rejected. While this community mechanism can function alongside homo economicus in win–win situations, it can be further activated with social preferences for altruism and reciprocity and with norms or worldviews that encourage cooperation. Other factors that relate to these include the character strengths that contribute to community and society known as virtues, with the concept of wellbeing related to virtues being known as eudaimonia. Some aspects of the acquisition of virtues can be viewed as changing preferences, and there is empirical evidence suggesting changes in trust relate to changes in preferences. Leadership is an example of the virtue of justice, and servant leadership seems important for the community mechanism, as does perspective taking. For evaluating policies, normative economics based only on consequentialism may not be sufficient, and virtue ethics seems essential when the community mechanism is important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is useful philosophy of economics? As such, it often extends beyond the confines of particular methodological disputes, which leave all else unscathed, and leans towards big-M methodology.[1] To be fair, Kincaid and Ross do not deny that the philosophy of economics may be useful in this sense, too. Focusing on ongoing methodological debates in economics and discussing them while steering clear of abstract philosophizing is not the only path to useful philosophy of economics, however. [Extracted from the article]

Demand estimates are essential for addressing a wide range of positive and normative questions in economics that are known to depend on the shape—and notably the curvature—of the true demand functions. The existing frontier approaches, while allowing flexible substitution patterns, typically require the researcher to commit to a parametric specification. An open question is whether these a priori restrictions are likely to significantly affect the results. To address this, I develop a nonparametric approach to estimation of demand for differentiated products, which I then apply to California supermarket data. While the approach subsumes workhorse models such as mixed logit, it allows consumer behaviors and preferences beyond standard discrete choice, including continuous choices, complementarities across goods, and consumer inattention. When considering a tax on one good, the nonparametric approach predicts a much lower pass‐through than a standard mixed logit model. However, when assessing the market power of a multiproduct firm relative to that of a single‐product firm, the models give similar results. I also illustrate how the nonparametric approach may be used to guide the choice among parametric specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bruno de Finetti's scientific work in the field of economics involved both a critique of pure economic theory, typically that of Vilfredo Pareto, and a reflection on normative economics, aimed at identifying alternative economic systems from which to choose. Our work, on the one hand, emphasises the unity of Bruno de Finetti's scientific conception, with particular reference to the subjective theory underpinning it; on the other hand, it highlights the problematic nature of the relationship between his subjectivist epistemology and the interaction between independent subjects who are supposed to identify a general interest. Insofar as de Finetti believes that subjects are independent and reality is subjective, no one seems to be able to decide what the general interest is. Insofar as de Finetti believes, on the other hand, that in the subjective complexity of reality a general interest can be identified, he should renounce the subjective conception of reality. It does not seem possible to get out of this contradiction, unless one believes that not all individuals are endowed with the same capacities and limited by the same subjectivity, and therefore that there may exist a subject, or a category of subjects, capable of identifying a general interest, and therefore depositary of some form of superiority, even moral. In this case, however, the contradiction could be overcome only by excluding such a subject, or category of subjects, from the general condition of subjectivity to which individuals are generally subject, at the cost of having to assume superiority on the part of this individual, or these individuals. The root of this approach seems to us to pose the need to investigate more thoroughly the relationship, also theoretical, between Bruno de Finetti and the Italian cultural and social situation of the 1920s, in which it arose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: The research area covered the issue of foresight from the perspective of normative economics exemplified by a public university. Foresight is a method that supports making decisions and facilitates mobilization to joint actions, which is reflected in normative economics. An economic entity, for example, a public university, can carry out tasks more efficiently and effectively using foresight instruments. Purpose of the article: The aim of the study is to (1) identify the possibilities of using the foresight method in the activities of a public university, (2) indicate areas of public university activity that should be improved with the use of foresight instruments from the point of view of economic effectiveness and efficiency, (3) identify barriers limiting application of the foresight method. Methods: participant observation, critical analysis of the literature on the subject, Delphi method, CAWI survey technique. Findings & Value added: Foresight can be analysed within the framework of normative economics. When using the participant observation method and other research methods, it can be concluded that foresight is gaining more and more importance in achieving the goals and tasks of a public university. There are areas that should be covered by foresight in the first place, as they are important for the effective and efficient achievement of results by public universities. This method is subject to certain barriers that limit the possibilities of its application at a public university. Research limitations/implications: The proposed FORx index was designed for public universities operating in Poland Originality/value: The FORx index is a universal tool that can be used to improve the practices of public universities. With the index, stakeholders obtain information about which foresight instruments are currently used by these entities and which tools they want to use in the next year of their activity.

This special issue in honour of John Weymark has its origin in a conference organized by Martin Van der Linden with Tommy Andersson, Craig Brett, Eun Jeong Heo, and Diana Weymark at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on April 13-14, 2019. The paper on generalized Gini indices (published in 1981) is one of his most cited paper (second to the industrial economics paper previously mentioned). Regarding economics, John's research interests have not been limited to social choice and welfare theory, although most of his papers deal with what can be broadly defined as normative economics. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Journal for Business, Economics & Ethics / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts und Unternehmensethik is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Assisted human reproduction (AHR) challenges traditional understandings of family relationships. Yet, the Irish legislature remains focused on normative constructions of the family and has relied on this understanding as the basis to determine the sort of legal family relationships that it will accommodate in AHR under the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022. The result is a Bill that adopts a binary view of reproduction that fails to align with broader legal and social developments. The Bill is also exclusionary as it seeks to limit access to AHR treatment to those families that replicate (or have the potential to replicate) the sexual family form. This article examines the normative underpinnings of the 2022 Bill by analysing the gendered language that is used to refer to different aspects of the reproductive process and by critiquing the provisions that restrict access to AHR treatment for certain intending parents. The article challenges the entrenchment of the sexual family in the legal imagination, arguing that there is a need to rethink the approach adopted in the 2022 Bill to ensure that the proposed legislation will accommodate the diverse range of families who will seek to rely on its provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Fairness versusWelfare (2003), Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell provide a manifesto for normative law and economics. Therein, they spell out the foundations for contemporary law and economics based on a Paretian consequentialist welfarism and a preferentialist account of welfare. We argue in this paper that this normative program faces serious challenges from recent behavioral insights that push back against a core assumption of a preferentialist welfare analysis, i. e., that people hold context-independent, stable preferences across different legal arrangements. We suggest an alternative normative focus for law and economics that borrows from Robert Sugden's (2018) opportunity criterion, which holds that individuals have an intrinsic interest in expanding their choice sets. We make the case that opportunity, rather than welfare as preference satisfaction, is a more convincing normative standard for law and economics, as its contractarian justification takes people's broadly construed interests seriously. Moreover, it is methodologically better suited to deal with people's unstable, context-dependent preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]