Choice and Public Policy: The Limits to Welfare Markets

Public policies increasingly emphasize active consumerism, entrepreneurship on the part of service providers and professionals, privatization, and an expanded role for markets. This text draws on research by economists, psychologists, sociologists and public policy experts. The research demonstrates that the traditional rational choice model of economic behaviour is unsatisfactory in providing accounts of the way people choose in relation to work, saving, spending, investment and social welfare. It also shows that the public policies of active consumerism, public sector entrepreneurship, and privatization based on this approach may be flawed.