Capabilities and Equality of Health II: Capabilities as Options

Hans Keiding
Additional contact information
Hans Keiding: Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

No 07-05, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: The concept of capabilities, introduced originally by Sen, has inspired many researchers but has not found any simple formal representation which might be instrumental in the construction of a comprehensive theory of equality. In a previous paper (Keiding, 2005), we investigated whether preferences over capabilities as sets of functionings can be rationalized by maximization of a suitable utility function over the set of functionings. Such a rationalization turned out to be possible only in cases which must be considered exceptional and which do not allowfor interesting applications of the capability approach to questions of health or equality. In the present paper we extend the notion of rationalizing orderings of capabilities to a dynamical context, in the sense that the utility function is not yet revealed to the individual at the time when the capabilities are ordered. It turns out that orderings which are in accordance with such probabilistic utility assignments can be characterized by a smaller set of the axioms previously considered.

Keywords: Capabilities; characteristics; equality of health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2007-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-upt
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ku.dk/english/research/publications/wp/2007/0705.pdf/ (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0705

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics Oester Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().