‘Positional goods’, a term coined by Fred Hirsch, is an important concept in economics, social sciences and philosophy; however, it is used in different ways. This paper recovers Hirsch’s concept of positional goods as scarce goods that are fixed or near-fixed in supply and argues for the usefulness of this concept. Hirsch’s concept may have explanatory power beyond the concept used by most economists – that of Robert Frank. Moreover, Hirsch’s concept is more explanatorily basic and useful than the concept used by most philosophers – that of Brighouse and Swift.

Political Equality is the view that, in political matters, everyone should have an equal say. Political Sufficiency is the view that, in political matters, everyone should have enough of a say. Whereas Political Equality is concerned with relativities, Political Sufficiency is a matter of absolutes. It is natural to assume that, to justify ‘one person, one vote’, we must appeal to Political Equality. We argue that this is not the case. If Political Equality justifies ‘one person, one vote’, so does Political Sufficiency. Moreover, there is reason to prefer Political Sufficiency to Political Equality.

Common sense morality follows – in many cases – the prescriptions of threshold deontology. Governments, for example, are expected to follow their own rules, but in the face of an extreme price increase, public opinion has often supported changing the rules ex post to increase tax revenues. Such moral license in extreme situations is puzzling from a philosophical and an economic point of view. We present a simple contractualist solution to this puzzle using a game-theoretic model. We argue that allowing for deviations from the social contract in extreme circumstances is a necessary condition for the stability of any social contract.

There is no consensus on how to infer welfare from inconsistent choices. We argue that theorists must be explicit about the values they endorse to characterize individual welfare. After formalizing a set of values and their relationship with context-independent choices, we review the literature and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of each approach. We demonstrate that defining welfare a priori may violate normative individualism, arguably the most desirable value to maintain. To uphold this value while addressing individuals’ errors, we propose a weaker version of consumer sovereignty, which we label ‘consumer autonomy’.

What gives the benefit principle its moral appeal as an idea of tax justice? And what can count as a benefit for that purpose? My claim is that we can trace the moral force of various versions of the principle to five ideas: individual justification, causal feedback, reciprocity, opposable valuation and non-objectionable baseline. I develop those ideas into an account of the moral permissibility of benefit-based taxation, and explain how that account addresses problems about the quantification and valuation of benefits and the relationship between benefit and the justice of the background distribution.

Unlike with randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in clinical research, little has been said about the ethical principles that should regulate the use of RCTs in experimental development economics. One well-known principle in clinical research ethics is the principle of clinical equipoise. Some recent commentators suggest that an analogue of clinical equipoise should play a role in experimental development economics. In this article, I first highlight some difficulties with importing the concept to experimental development economics. I then argue that MacKay’s (2018, 2020) notion of policy equipoise avoids these difficulties and has a role to play in experimental development economics.

We present a model that locates the source of vagueness as the speaker’s inability to perfectly perceive the world. We show that the agents will communicate clearly about the world as the sender perceives it. However, the implied meaning about the actual world will be vague. Vagueness is characterized by probability distributions that describe the degree to which a statement is likely to be true. Hence, we provide micro-foundations for truth-degree functions as an equilibrium consequence of the sender’s perception technology and his optimal, non-vague communication in the perceived world – connecting the epistemic and truth-degree approaches to vagueness.

I argue that alienation objections to housing markets face a dilemma. Either they purport to explain distributive injustices, or they hold that markets are objectionable on intrinsic grounds. The first disjunct is empirically dubious. The second undermines the motivation for objecting to housing markets, and overgeneralizes: if markets are objectionable due to alienation, so is all large-scale social cooperation.

Fausto Corvino has recently argued in this journal that, given present people’s reasonable expectation of future people’s economic activity, present and future people stand in the relation required by both of the two main camps of justice as reciprocity: justice as self-interested reciprocity and justice as fair reciprocity. In reply, I argue that on neither view is the relation Corvino identifies the relation the view requires and that neither view endorses his principle of intergenerational distributive justice, Transgenerational Sufficiency, in a contract between generations. I show that these concerns generalize to any view of synchronic direct intergenerational reciprocity.

Guerini and Moneta (2017) have developed a sophisticated method of providing empirical evidence in support of the relations of causal dependence that macroeconomists engaging in agent-based modelling believe obtain in the target system of their models. The paper presents three problems that get in the way of successful applications of this method: problems that have to do with the potential chaos of the target system, the non-measurability of variables standing for individual or aggregate expectations, and the failure of macroeconomic aggregates to screen off individual expectations from the microeconomic quantities that constitute the aggregates. The paper also discusses the in-principle solvability of the three problems and uses a prominent agent-based model (the Keynes + Schumpeter model of the macroeconomy) as a running example.

This article links the human concern for relative social standing with technological developments, and the future of work. We argue that to the extent that the desire for social status retains its importance in human behaviour, technological advancements affecting the production of goods and services will not necessarily lead to a diminishment of the demand for human labour. This essay makes two principal contributions. First, it links two different literatures: that regarding status-driven consumption, and that regarding the effects of technological change on labour markets. Second, it offers an alternative justification for the conclusion that radical technological shocks will not eliminate the importance of work.

According to the model of exchange as mutual assistance, an exchange can be perceived as a joint activity for mutual benefit – and needn’t involve any self-directed motives at all. This essay pushes back against this new defence of market motives. The essay develops an alternative ideal of production as caring solidarity, in which production is a joint activity of caring about one another. Points of overlap and difference are developed in some detail. The essay concludes by discussing the implications for an economics of caring solidarity, with discussion of the limitations of various market socialist strategies.

In institutional design, public policy and for society as a whole, securing freedom of choice for individuals is important. But how much choice should we aim for? Various theorists argue that above some level more choice improves neither wellbeing nor autonomy. Worse still, psychology research seems to suggest that too much choice even makes us worse off. Such reasons suggest the Sufficiency View: increasing choice is only important up to some sufficiency level, a level that is not too far from the level enjoyed by well-off citizens in rich liberal countries today. I argue that we should reject the Sufficiency View and accept Liberal Optimism instead: expanding freedom of choice should remain an important priority even far beyond levels enjoyed in rich liberal countries today. I argue that none of the arguments given for the Sufficiency View work. Neither psychological evidence nor any broader social trends support it. If anything, they support Liberal Optimism instead. I also show why further increases are possible and desirable, and sketch some implications for debates around immigration, economic growth, markets and the value of community.

Which implications follow for the value of freedom on a hybrid account of wellbeing that appeals to endorsement? On the basis of Olsaretti’s empirical claim that one is unlikely to endorse wellbeing when one is forced to achieve it, I show that standardly on the hybrid account there is a reason to protect people’s freedom to dysfunction, and hence that the freedoms to dysfunction are valuable. I also discuss whether freedom is non-specifically valuable on grounds of endorsement. I advance an epistemic version of freedom’s non-specific value that is especially relevant for a theory of justice that appeals to publicity.

Lara Buchak defends a Weight-Ranked Utilitarianism (WRU) that she says avoids the critique of Rawls’s that is sometimes thought fatal: utilitarianism unjustifiably blurs the distinction between persons. Buchak’s defence depends upon (i) a version of Harsanyi’s assumption that parties to a social contract should reason as if they have an equal chance of being anyone and (ii) a hypothesis she explores in a recent article. I argue that her assumption and hypothesis are untenable. WRU fails of the generality to which Buchak aspires because it fails for one of her most important cases: the distributive question posed by Rawls.

Recently, convergence liberals, such as Kevin Vallier, argue that the principle of social insurance could be publicly justified. Our paper challenges this marriage of convergence liberalism and welfare state. We begin by examining Vallier’s three reasons for the principle of social insurance: risk aversion, injustice and the promotion of political trust. We then argue that all these reasons are intelligibly objectionable. After examining five possible responses that convergence liberals may offer, this paper concludes that the principle of social insurance is not conclusively justified in the convergence conception of public justification.