Consumer sovereignty

Several considerations are involved. First is a preference for consumer sovereignty, allowing recipients to choose how to spend. Second, being a consumer or a producer of a particular commodity is a poor indicator of whether assistance is deserved. Eveiyone from the poorest residents (but not the homeless) to the richest Americans are residential electricity consumers. Third, commodity-specific policies tend more to aid producers in the industry than consumers. Politicians often dispute these appraisals and institute subsidies on equity grounds. 

Finally, intervention may be justified by the non-acceptance of some of the premises of conventional analysis for example, if we postulate the existence of merit goods, that is, if we reject the pertinence of the normative principle of consumer sovereignty and accept the imposition of preferences by a technical or political elite. 

In the third section we analyse expected effects from a microeconomic perspective, and we discuss to what extent the neoclassical microeconomic theoiy of demand is applicable to the case of pharmaceuticals. We explore the effects of co-payment on consumption and expenditure, and how it is shared between user and insurer, but also the possible effects on the health of individuals and populations. Equity considerations are inevitably raised in this analysis. The elements on which the analysis hinges in this section are price and income elasticities of demand for pharmaceuticals the role of the doctor as an inducer of demand consumer sovereignty discontinuities in demand functions and other notable exceptions to the classical ma.rgina.1ist. theoiy of demand. These exceptions require special microeconometric models and methods. 

First, a distinction must be drawn between prescribed drugs and self-prescribed drugs, a distinction which is important for two reasons. The first has to do with consumer sovereignty. Only the demand for self-prescribed drugs expresses the patient s freely decided willingness to pay. In the other case, it is prescribing doctors who initiate the demand, and they may not be perfect agents for their patients, either because they are subject to certain... 

Korthals, M. (2001) Taking consumers seriously two concepts of consumer sovereignty. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 14 (2), 201-215. 

Respect for consumer sovereignty The choices consumers make with respect to private consumption are respected and treated as data in the analysis. As an example, choosing a comparatively risky mode of travel, like riding a motorcycle, is not regarded as somehow wrong. It is merely treated as a choice the analyst enters as data in the analysis. 

APPRI 50 farmers, 2 organic farmers Interaction with city consumers Food autonomy and diversity via box scheme Consumer- validated Solidarity in pricing and integration Food sovereignty communities Fraternity, cooperation Congmence between principle and practice... 

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