Freedom and Adaptive Preferences

Traditional welfare economics works with the assumption of the fully rational economic agent (homo economicus) whose preferences are fixed: that is, they are not influenced by their economic environment. To the contrary, this book presents a theory of welfare economics that maintains the principles of normative individualism while allowing for adaptive or changeable preferences.

Why do economists talk of preferences? In this book, Carl Christian von Weizsäcker shows that the concept is intim...