"In Conversation" Series
Location:
Zoom:
https://huji.zoom.us/j/82420954918?pwd=FXHGQNw2wJi3w9Hc3AhnbPushy0eko.1
Lecturer:
Prof. Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard)
Title:
Monetizing Life (With Special Reference to Children and Animals)
Abstract:
What is the value of reducing mortality risks? Economists and regulators use willingness to pay (WTP). If we assume adequate information and an absence of behavioral biases, WTP is the right number, at least when people must pay for the risk reduction they receive ("forced exchanges"). Unresolved but fundamental questions, with immense practice importance, involve children and nonhuman animals. Neither has money, and so neither has WTP. In the case of children, there is an argument for using parental WTP, at least if we assume perfect altruism, adequate information, forced exchanges, and a budget constraint ("money for children"). Something similar can be said for nonhuman animals, if we assume that they are owned by human beings. The problem is that the relevant assumptions are often false.
Short Bio:
Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom.
Prof. Sunstein is author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), Simpler: The Future of Government (2013), The Ethics of Influence (2015), #Republic (2017), Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide (2017), The Cost-Benefit Revolution (2018), On Freedom (2019), Conformity (2019), How Change Happens (2019), Too Much Information (2020), Decisions About Decisions (2023), How to Become Famous (2024), Campus Free Speech (2024), Climate Change Justice (forthcoming 2025), and On Manipulation (2025).