Policy evaluation under severe uncertainty: a cautious, egalitarian approach
Voorhoeve, A.
(2021).
Policy evaluation under severe uncertainty: a cautious, egalitarian approach.
In
Heilmann, C. & Reiss, J.
(Eds.),
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics
(pp. 467 - 479).
Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315739793-42
(2021).
Policy evaluation under severe uncertainty: a cautious, egalitarian approach.
In
Heilmann, C. & Reiss, J.
(Eds.),
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics
(pp. 467 - 479).
Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315739793-42
In some severely uncertain situations, as exemplified by climate change and novel pandemics, policymakers lack a reasoned basis for assigning probabilities to the possible outcomes of the policies they must choose between. I outline and defend an uncertainty-averse, egalitarian approach to policy evaluation in these contexts. The upshot is a theory of distributive justice that offers especially strong reasons to guard against individual and collective misfortune.