The History of Economic Thought Matters for Economics: Lessons from Welfarism in Welfare economics

Antoinette Baujard ()
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Antoinette Baujard: Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, Université Lyon 2, emLyon, CNRS, GATE Lyon Saint-Etienne UMR 5824, F-42023 Saint-Etienne, France

No 2610, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Etienne (GATE Lyon St-Etienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: The history of economic thought matters for economics. Observing how the exact meaning of the word ‘welfarism’ – a focus on utility to assess social states – varies across historical and multi-disciplinary perspectives offers lessons to revisit welfare economics. While Sen’s definition initially raised two categories of criticism, this paper shows that welfare economics has gradually incorporated the ‘informational issue’, but continues to overlook major problems raised by the ‘framework issue’, such as the neglect of agency and individualism. The epistemic reliability of such broad narratives depends on an explicit benchmark and is further supported by papers using other approaches.

Keywords: Welfare economics; Social welfare; Welfarism; Framework; Information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B21 B41 D60 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gat:wpaper:2610

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