Procedural Utility
Procedural Utility
Procedural utility is an approach to human well-being that emphasizes the conditions and processes that lead to outcomes, rather than only the outcomes. In contrast to outcome utility, which views individual utility as a result of benefits and costs associated with instrumental outcomes, procedural utility highlights the non-instrumental pleasures and displeasures of processes. The procedural view is also important because happiness is more a side product of a “good life,” suggesting that the process, not the outcome, is what matters. This chapter shows that procedural utility is a relevant concept for economics by citing evidence from a broad range of social sciences and other fields. It discusses democratic institutions, procedures for allocating public goods, taxation, income redistribution, and social inequality. It also argues that procedural utility is of great relevance to policy.
Keywords: happiness, procedural utility, outcome utility, well-being, economics, democratic institutions, public goods, taxation, income redistribution, social inequality
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
