The Debate on the Nature of Welfare Economics in the Contemporary Methodology of Economics

Bogusław Czarny

Ekonomia journal, 2011, vol. 27

Abstract: In this article I describe dispute about whether welfare economics is normative economics, or the positive economics. The introduction to the discussion was a debate between Ezra Mishan and Pieter Hennipman in 1982–1984. It resulted in Mishan’s acceptation of the Hennipman’s view, that welfare economics is a part of the positive economics. After a couple of years the topic appeared back in the economic journals. In the first part of this article I present views of George Archibald, Pieter Hennipman and Yew-Kwang Ng,which treat welfare economics as a part of positive economics. In the second part I present contrary opinions of Mark Blaug. In the third part I present counterarguments, which (in my opinion) undermine Blaug’s position. I end with the hypothesis that dispute, which I described, can be caused—among others—by the existing, since the time of John Neville Keynes and Max Weber, ambiguity of the terms "positive economics" and "normative economics".

Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ekonomia.wne.uw.edu.pl/ekonomia/getFile/318 (application/pdf)
no

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:eko:ekoeko:27_3

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Ekonomia journal from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().