Robert Sugden

Robert Sugden is a British economist who has taught and conducted research for many years at the School of Economics of the University of East Anglia in Norwich. His work lies at the intersection of economics, political philosophy and ethics, addressing both the technical problems of choice theory and fundamental questions about the standards by which welfare and markets should be judged.

Among his early works are *The Principles of Practical Cost-Benefit Analysis* (with Alan Williams, 1978) and *The Political Economy of Public Choice* (1981). In 1982, together with Graham Loomes, he presented regret theory, which explains why people's choices under uncertainty sometimes depart from the standard principles of expected utility theory. His book *The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare* (1986) established him as a leading figure in research on how conventions and social norms emerge from strategic interaction. He also collaborated with Michael Bacharach in developing the theory of "team reasoning," which seeks to explain cooperative behavior by asking "what should we do?" rather than merely "what should I do?"

In recent decades Sugden has criticized welfarist approaches in behavioral economics and the foundations of "nudge"-based policymaking. He argues that economists should not label people's preferences "irrational" and set themselves up as judges of people's true well-being. His book *The Community of Advantage: A Behavioural Economist's Defence of the Market* (2018) develops this view: the market should be understood as an arena of mutual advantage and voluntary cooperation among individuals, not as an instrument for maximizing social welfare. This outlook is rooted in the contractarian tradition and in the thought of David Hume and Adam Smith.