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Social Choice and Welfare
Published in: Social Choice and Welfare 4/2023

12-09-2022 | Original Paper

On Sugden’s normative economics and the comparison of non-nested opportunity sets

Author: Bertrand Crettez

Published in: Social Choice and Welfare | Issue 4/2023

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Abstract

In his book The Community of Advantage, Sugden proposes a form of normative economics that is almost free of the concept of preferences. Specifically, Sugden relies on the idea that everyone can accept the principle that more opportunities is better than less. Yet, this approach cannot be easily applied to the choice of economic reforms that fail to provide more opportunities for everyone. This paper complements an approach proposed by Sugden to deal with non-nested opportunity sets. We rely on the idea that people should take responsibility for the choices that were not endorsed before the reform takes place. In this perspective, a reform project is admissible if it allows people to stick to their initial choices and provides them with a rich set of opportunities (that is, the new opportunity regime must also satisfy Sugden’s Strong Interactive Opportunity Criterion). As an illustration, we show how routine redistribution schemes can make free trade be preferred to autarky even if it does not provide more opportunities for everyone.
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Footnotes
1
I am grateful to Robert Sugden for his constructive remarks on two previous versions of this work. I also thank the Editor, Clemens Puppe, for his help on the last version of the paper. Any error is my sole responsibility.
 
2
Sugden (2021, p. 426), however, underlines that there are two versions of the opportunity principle in TCA. At the individual level, this opportunity means that more opportunity is always welcome. At the collective level, what matters is collective opportunity and in particular that the Strong Interactive Opportunity Criterion be satisfied. So, Sugden does not argue that more is always better at the collective level.
 
3
In this regard, all policy issues addressed in the chapter Regulation of TCA are solved by adopting regulations that expand opportunities for mutually beneficial transactions.
 
4
Dold and Rizzo (2021, p. 366), note that the TCA is silent about the comparison of non-nested opportunity sets. Sugden (2021, p. 426), however, makes precise that the assumption that opportunity sets are non-nested only holds for the analysis of the individual version of the opportunity principle.
 
5
Here, allowable refers to both physical as well as institutional feasibility.
 
6
Elements of subsets of \({\mathbb {R}}^{m+n}\) are in bold letters.
 
7
An acquisition profile is feasible for a set \(S \subset I\) of individuals if \(\sum _{i \in S} q_{i}= 0\).
 
8
Sugden (2017, 2018) also refers to an Interactive Opportunity Criterion where the second item of the definition above is only satisfied with the grand coalition of consumers, namely when \(S = I\).
 
9
This definition corresponds to what Sugden (2017, p. 494) calls a strict single-price regime (see, also Sugden 2017, p. 501).
 
10
See appendix 2 of Sugden (2017, p. 501).
 
11
This assumption means that money is desired either when good g price is relatively high (think about consumers who sell that good), or when this price is low enough (think about consumers who buy that good).
 
12
I thank Robert Sugden for this remark.
 
13
If \(q_i\) were not in \({{\mathcal {O}}}_i\), it was out of reach and consumer i does not need to take responsibility for it not having been chosen.
 
14
This notion of responsibility appears to be the same as that adopted in The Community of Advantage, notably in subsections 5.5 and 5.6 of that book.
 
15
This subsection heavily relies on Robert Sugden’s remarks on a previous version of this work.
 
16
The proof of this theorem does not depend on whether there is one our several countries.
 
17
We shall ignore international transfers.
 
18
That follows from the fact that for all c, the autarkic individual profiles \(q^{c}_{i}\) are feasible at the national level: \(\sum _{i} q^{c}_{i} = 0\). Then, \(\sum _{i} T^c_{i} = \sum _{i} \langle {p} - {p}^c, q^c_i \rangle = \langle {p} - {p}^c, \sum _{i} q^{c}_{i} \rangle = 0\).
 
Literature
Sugden R (2004) The opportunity criterion: consumer sovereignty without the assumption of coherent preferences. Am Econ Rev 94:1014–1033CrossRef
Sugden R (2017) Characterizing competitive equilibrium in terms of opportunity. Soc Choice Welf 48:487–503CrossRef
Sugden R (2018) The community of advantage. Oxford University Press, OxfordCrossRef
Sugden R (2021) A response to six comments on The Community of Advantage. J Econ Methodol 28(4):419–430CrossRef
Metadata
Title
On Sugden’s normative economics and the comparison of non-nested opportunity sets
Author
Bertrand Crettez
Publication date
12-09-2022
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Social Choice and Welfare / Issue 4/2023
Print ISSN: 0176-1714
Electronic ISSN: 1432-217X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-022-01433-3

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