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Public Choice and Altruism

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Author Info
Karl Widerquist () (Oxford University)

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Abstract

The public choice literature has paid little attention to altruism, and the few works that do deal with it usually focus on the tradeoff between selfish and unselfish preferences, assuming some shared set of unselfish preferences. This focus leaves the question open as to whether unselfish but conflicting beliefs can be the source of public choice problems. This paper examines conflicting ethical beliefs among purely altruistic individuals to show that many of the problems that appear to go away if people are altruistic (assuming notions of the public interest are shared) return if notions of the public interest conflict no matter how altruistic people may be.

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File URL: http://college.holycross.edu/eej/Volume29/V29N3P317_337.pdf
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Publisher Info
Article provided by Eastern Economic Association in its journal Eastern Economic Journal.

Volume (Year): 29 (2003)
Issue (Month): 3 (Summer)
Pages: 317-337
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Handle: RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:29:y:2003:i:3:p:317-337

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Related research
Keywords: Altruism;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism
D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

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  11. Baron David & Kalai Ehud, 1993. "The Simplest Equilibrium of a Majority-Rule Division Game," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 290-301, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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