Welfare Economics, Morality, and the Law

52 Pages Posted: 27 Mar 2003

See all articles by Steven Shavell

Steven Shavell

Harvard Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Date Written: February 2003

Abstract

This paper contains the chapters on welfare economics, morality, and the law from a general, forthcoming book, Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2003). I begin in chapter 26 with a discussion of the normative foundations of economic analysis, namely, the subject of welfare economics. I also describe notions of morality and fairness, which play an important, if dominant, role in much normative discourse about law, and I discuss the connections between welfare economics and morality. A theme of this discussion is that notions of morality have functional aspects, and that, for a complex of reasons, they also take on importance in their own right to individuals.

Then in chapter 27, I consider the observed relationship between law and morality, and comment on what might be thought to be the optimal relationship between law and morality.

In chapter 28, I discuss issues concerning income distributional equity and the law, including the question of whether the distributional effects of legal rules should influence their selection. The answer to this question will be a qualified no, given that society has an income tax system that can serve to redistribute income or to correct problems with distribution that arise due to the effects of legal rules.

JEL Classification: D00, D6, K00

Suggested Citation

Shavell, Steven, Welfare Economics, Morality, and the Law (February 2003). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=391041 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.391041

Steven Shavell (Contact Author)

Harvard Law School ( email )

1575 Massachusetts
Hauser 406
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States
617-495-3668 (Phone)
617-496-2256 (Fax)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
815
Abstract Views
3,883
Rank
55,761
PlumX Metrics