Welfare, the Stoics, and reference dependence

My essay on the relationship between Stoic and economic ideas about welfare has been published in the Journal of Markets & Morality.

Economic accounts of consumer welfare focus heavily on the physical circumstances of the consumer.  In contrast, in many religious and philosophical traditions, welfare is thought to be largely independent of physical circumstances.  This essay argues that the introduction of reference dependence enriches economic models of choice in a way that connects the economic account of welfare with the contrasting account offered by the Stoics….

Read the whole piece.