EconTech

Blaming The Unlucky

A recent working paper finds that we call the same decision immoral when it leads to a bad outcome, but moral when it leads to a good outcome:
Two studies investigated the influence of outcome information on ethical judgment. Participants read a series of vignettes describing ethically-questionable behaviors. We manipulated whether those behaviors were [...]

I haven’t seen any moral theory that doesn’t suffer from the problems Tyler describes. Thus, while I, for the most part, agree with his criticisms, the lesson I take away is not “I’m not a Rawlsian” but “Philosophy is not dead.” Aggregation is always an issue. I have other minor quibbles here and there, but [...]

Apparently, I’m British. Well, not really. But my siding for zero-time preferences is apparently un-American, in terms of the modes of thought of American economists. One of the points I made earlier, that Robin’s point 2 about looking at the market for the rate is non-responsive to Eliezer’s objection that this is a bias, is [...]

For anyone who has thought about climate change, or any other major, long term policy, remotely seriously, the choice of a discount rate becomes a critical value in your model rather quickly. The problem is, of course, that it is a value that can substantially alter the outcomes of an analysis, but the choice of [...]

In a policy debate, data is usually good. But it is important to put data in context. Before I rant:
“Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate”:
This is easy for me. It doesn’t matter whether the research on the issue is valid or not. I’m against the death penalty. Period.:
Does Death Penalty Save [...]