Responsibility, individual choice and redistributive policy

The aim of the project "responsibility, individual choice and redistributive policy" is to analyse how considerations of individual responsibility can be incorporated into both normative and positive theory. In doing so, the project aims to clarify the fo undations of normative economic analysis and contribute to a better understanding of how fairness considerations affect individual decision making. applying insights from the normative and the positive analysis of responsibility the project will derive th e implications for the design of welfare policy, including the tax policy and health care policy. By combining both normative and positive analysis of the same issues the project hopes to harvest a double dividend. Positive analysis is valuable in the de velopment of normative theory because it provides a better understanding of the implication of redistributive ideals and positive analysis benefits from being informed by normative theory because it gives necessary direction and structure to the positive analysis. Another important aspect of the project is that it will draw on both economic and philosophical theory and aims to initiate collaboration between economists and philosophers.