Ambuehl, Sandro
[VerfasserIn];
Blesse, Sebastian
[VerfasserIn];
Dörrenberg, Philipp
[VerfasserIn];
Feldhaus, Christoph
[VerfasserIn];
Ockenfels, Axel
[VerfasserIn]
Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments 2023 erstellt
Beschreibung:
Much economic analysis derives policy recommendations based on social welfare criteria intended to model the preferences of a policy maker. Yet, little is known about policy maker’s normative views in a way amenable to this use. In a behavioral experiment, we elicit German legislators’ social welfare criteria unconfounded by political economy constraints. When resolving preference conflicts across individuals, politicians place substantially more importance on least-favored than on most-favored alternatives, contrasting with both common aggregation mechanisms and the equal weighting inherent in utilitarianism and the Kaldor-Hicks criterion. When resolving preference conflicts within individuals, we find no support for the commonly used “long-run criterion” which insists that choices merit intervention only if the lure of immediacy may bias intertemporal choice. Politicians’ and the public’s social welfare criteria largely coincide