Psychology Today | 13.06.2026 03:54
Caring about animal welfare has psychological and economic costs. While a good deal of research has centered on topics such as compassion and empathy fatigue, there have been few detailed studies of economic aspects.1 For this and other reasons, I was thrilled to learn about Nicolas Treich's recent book,Animal Economics: Directly and Indirectly Accounting for Animal Welfare, in which he "explores the complexity of the behavioral attitude of humans toward animals using behavioral economics and explains how existing economic theory can be applied to understand animal welfare as an externality."2 Here's what he had to say about his deeply thoughtful and highly-acclaimed work.
