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We argue that it is both possible and timely to relax the assumption of anthropocentrism in agricultural and resource economics. We advocate for the incorporation of sentientist principles by including the welfare of sentient animals within the social welfare function. To exemplify this non‐anthropocentric stance, we build on our recent works that incorporate the intrinsic value of farmed animals into food production and consumption. By recognising the externalities affecting animals, we justify the implementation of specific policies, such as a meat tax, which redistributes welfare from consumers and producers to farmed animals. Furthermore, we delve into the quantitative assessment of animal welfare and demonstrate its application to food policy, revealing the substantial economic and welfare impacts at stake. Expanding on our earlier model, we also emphasize the importance of introducing a 'sentience premium' within species conservation policies. This additional consideration ensures that the conservation efforts appropriately account for the intrinsic value of sentient beings living in the wild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is some evidence that people have biased perceptions of risks, such as lethal or environmental risks. Hence their behavior is based on beliefs which may di¤er from the ’objective’ beliefs used by a regulator. The optimal regulation then depends on this di¤erence in beliefs. We set up a general framework and study this policy change. It turns out that, in many situations, the policy change depends on the absolute ’distance’ between beliefs, and not on whether agents over-estimate or under-estimate risks. We characterize the necessary and su¢cient condition for ’more distant’ beliefs to always reduce the regulator’s decision. We apply and extend that condition in several ways.

Le principe de précaution est très populaire aujourd’hui. Mais a-t-il un fondement économique ? Nous présentons deux théories économiques de la précaution. La première se base sur le cadre classique d’espérance d’utilité avec révision bayésienne des croyances. La seconde se fonde sur l’aversion à l’ambiguïté. Nous discutons l’intérêt, mais aussi les limites de ces deux approches.