Ethics and technique in welfare economics: How welfarism evolves in the making

Antoinette Baujard

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Abstract: Under welfarism, assertions such as "this social state is better than an alternative" or "this policy should be enacted" are based on the assumption that social welfare ultimately depends only on the well-being of individuals. A normative analysis of welfarism seeks to provide a transparent description of the basis upon which welfarism makes its value judgements, which is equivalent to an investigation into its choice of a preferred notion of well-being. Such an investigation, this paper claims, can take two forms, which we should distinguish: the ethical analysis of welfarism is concerned with the appeal to a given ethical theory of well-being; and the technical analysis of welfarism concerns the specific measure of individual utility that in practice is used to measure social welfare. Reviewing a series of claims which bear on how these two versions of welfarism are articulated (the standard, proxy, evidential and tension claims), the paper explores the differences between the ethical and technical approaches in the normative interpretation of welfarist assertions.

Keywords: Welfare Economics; Welfarism; Ethics; Practice; Ethical welfarism; Technical welfarism; Demarcation; Neutrality; Non-Neutrality; Axiological transparency; Value judgements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hpe and nep-upt
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04150893v2
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Related works:
Working Paper: Ethics and technique in welfare economics: How welfarism evolves in the making (2023)
Working Paper: Ethics and Technique in Welfare Economics: How Welfarism Evolves in the Making (2023)
Journal Article: Ethics and Technique in Welfare Economics: How Welfarism Evolves in the Making (2022)
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