Beyond Rationality, Towards Reasonableness: Enriching the Theoretical Foundation of Deliberative Monetary Valuation

Economic valuation is often deemed an important source of information for land-use decisions. Stated preference (SP) methods are a particularly potent class of economic valuation methods, but they are also particularly controversial. In response to accumulating criticism of SP, deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) has been proposed as an alternative approach and has gained considerable attention in recent years. However, being a combination of elements from two theories - neoclassical welfare economics and theory of deliberative democracy - it lacks a convincing, consistent theoretical foundation. In our paper, we propose some clarifying adjustments regarding rationality assumptions and aggregation issues by drawing upon the work of Amartya Sen. We find that many of his ideas lead to a harmonisation of DMV's theoretical foundations, e.g. meta-rankings of preferences, impartial spectator and the plurality of impartial reasons.