TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kaplow,Louis
AU  - Shavell,Steven
TI  - Fairness Versus Welfare: Notes on the Pareto Principle, Preferences, and Distributive Justice
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9622
PY  - 2003
Y2  - April 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9622
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9622.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Louis Kaplow
Harvard University
Hauser 322
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-4101
Fax: 617/496-4880
E-Mail: meskridge@law.harvard.edu

Steven Shavell
Harvard Law School
1575 Massachusetts Avenue
Hauser Hall 508
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-3668
Fax: 617/496-2256
E-Mail: shavell@law.harvard.edu
AB  - In Fairness versus Welfare, we advance the thesis that social policies should be assessed based entirely on their effects on individuals' well-being.  This thesis implies that no independent weight should be accorded to notions of fairness (other than many purely distributive notions).  We support our thesis in three ways: by demonstrating how notions of fairness perversely reduce welfare, indeed, sometimes everyone's well-being; by revealing numerous other deficiencies in the notions, including their lack of sound rationales; and by providing an account of notions of fairness that explains their intuitive appeal in a manner that reinforces the conclusion that they should not be treated as independent principles in policy assessment.  In this essay, we discuss these three themes and comment on issues raised by Richard Craswell, Lewis Kornhauser, and Jeremy Waldron.
ER  -