MICH: Poverty and the respect for preferences

François Maniquet (UCL, CORE)
Normative economics is grounded on the Pareto principle. Its classical justification is the respect for agents’ preferences, which follows from the view that humans are autonomous moral agents. However, it seems that when they deal with poverty and the design of anti-poverty policies, economists drop the Pareto principle and adopts a paternalistic view. Is this attitude justified?