The Foundational Decade to Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach (1970-1980)

Valentina Erasmo ()

Rivista di storia economica, 2019, issue 3, 295-326

Abstract: Between 1970 and 1980, due to economization process of extra economic field of human existence and an exclusively economic understanding of rationality, Sen realized a reversal compared to this tendency, thanks to the critical exchange with his contemporaries, as Arrow, Rawls and Harsanyi, about assumptions concerning individual preferences/collective choices, inequalities, rationality and social welfare functions. Here, I have considered this period as the foundational decade to capability approach: this analysis is fundamental not only for showing the intellectual origin of this approach, but also for avoiding dangerous trivializations which hinders a proper understanding of it.

Keywords: capability approach; individual preferences/collective choices; inequality; rationality; social welfare functions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1410/98221 (application/pdf)
https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1410/98221 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:mul:jrkmxm:doi:10.1410/98221:y:2019:i:3:p:295-326

Access Statistics for this article

Rivista di storia economica is currently edited by P.L. Ciocca, G. Federico, G. Toniolo (resp.)

More articles in Rivista di storia economica from Società editrice il Mulino
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().