Aggregating Local Preferences To Guide Policy
نویسندگان
چکیده
How could well-being data, for example those based on survey measures, be used for guiding policy? Exploring one direction, we analyze a mechanism that takes as inputs estimates of policy effects on different groups’ utility proxies (constructed from the well-being data), and aggregates them into policy-change recommendations. We develop three justifications for the mechanism based on: an analogy with social welfare maximization, a formal equivalence to a voting procedure, and an axiomatic characterization. We show that iterated application of the mechanism has a stationary point that is Pareto efficient. Through analytic results and simulations, we assess potential limitations of the mechanism, such as its sensitivity to the units in which policies are measured. JEL Classification: D69, H0, I38
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