A public decision maker needs to decide to allocate some subsidy towards the conditions for public transportation or for private transportation. If she wants to improve the collective welfare of the community based on the individual preferences between public and private transportation, she needs to learn about the latter. A possible way to infer individual preferences lies in the revealed preference theory. With Saaris's technique of probability calculus, it becomes possible to study how much information is reliable for plausible assumptions about the conditions of data observations. We conclude that public decision makers may hardly get the relevant welfarist information to circumvent the problem raised by the lack of independence condition. This counter-example provides an operational argument against the use of strict technical welfarism in public economics.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Microeconomic Data D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: