Values, Preferences, and the Marriage of Scientific Rationality and Policy-Making

Positing sets of values and preferences is at the heart of our economic edifice, both in terms of studying it as well as in the sense of acting within it, through policymaking. These values/preferences (whose provenance is rarely technological) and their evolution are often given short shrift, partly because they are hard to model, and partly because one needs a wider, multidisciplinary approach to approach the issue. Ideally it would involve, and even spearhead a reuniting of the divergent intellectual cultures C.P. Snow identified half-a century ago. In any case it would call for taking heads-on the challenge of understanding values/preferences evolution, and the way outcomes are ordered on the basis of sets of changing values/preferences, which ultimately may impact the very evolution of values/preferences.