Morality & Economic Analysis

Hebrew University law profs Eyal Zamir and Barak Medina have posted a new paper, Incorporating Moral Constraints Into Economic Analysis.  From the abstract:

Economic analysis of law is a powerful analytical methodology. At the same time, as a purely consequentialist approach, which determines the desirability of acts and rules solely by assessing the goodness of their outcomes, standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is normatively objectionable. This Article proposes to overcome this deficiency by incorporating moral constraints into CBA.

Threshold deontology differs from welfare economics and other consequentialist moral theories in recognizing the priority of such things as autonomy, human dignity, basic liberties, truth telling, and keeping one's promises over the promotion of good outcomes. It holds that there are constraints to promoting the good, such as the constraints against harming other people and lying. Unlike absolutist deontology, however, threshold deontology holds that such constraints may be overridden if enough good (or, more commonly, enough bad) is at stake. For instance, while standard CBA is likely to justify the killing of one person to save the lives of two, or the coercive harvesting of one's kidney to save the live of another person, threshold deontology would find killing a person or harvesting her organs against her will impermissible unless much more good (e.g., the lives of many more people) is at stake. The analysis demonstrates that not only foundational deontology, but also the more sophisticated defenses of consequentialism, endorse such constraints.

Larry Solum offers some thoughts here.

Rob