I’m excited about the growing field of the economics of animal welfare, including research papers like the two you mentioned. I’m not sure the field will play a significant role in increasing the spending on animal welfare interventions (though curious to hear how you see that happening). But I see a number of important other roles it can play:
Influencing public policy, by allowing the integrating of animal welfare benefits into cost-benefit analysis. I’ve seen a number of animal welfare regulatory proposals be stopped in part because regulators assigned zero value to the animal welfare benefits.
Influencing effective advocacy. I think experiments, like those done at college dining halls on the meat consumption impacts of lectures and leafletting, can lead us toward more cost-effective interventions.
Influencing the rest of academia. For example, my sense is that fields like environmental economics currently often exclude animal welfare from their considerations, leading to conclusions that can help the environment but harm animal welfare.
I’m excited about the growing field of the economics of animal welfare, including research papers like the two you mentioned. I’m not sure the field will play a significant role in increasing the spending on animal welfare interventions (though curious to hear how you see that happening). But I see a number of important other roles it can play:
Influencing public policy, by allowing the integrating of animal welfare benefits into cost-benefit analysis. I’ve seen a number of animal welfare regulatory proposals be stopped in part because regulators assigned zero value to the animal welfare benefits.
Influencing effective advocacy. I think experiments, like those done at college dining halls on the meat consumption impacts of lectures and leafletting, can lead us toward more cost-effective interventions.
Influencing the rest of academia. For example, my sense is that fields like environmental economics currently often exclude animal welfare from their considerations, leading to conclusions that can help the environment but harm animal welfare.