 Some Fundamental Issues in Social WelfareYew-Kwang Ng () Chapter 14 in Issues in Contemporary Microeconomics and Welfare, 1985, pp 435-469 from Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: Abstract As noted by Amartya Sen (1979, p. 537), Wassily Leontief has succinctly summarized the normative properties ‘on which something like a general consensus of opinion seems to exist’ in the formal discussion of public economic policies: In the discussion of public economic policies — in contrast to the analysis of individual choice — the normative character of the problem has been clearly and generally recognized. There the mathematical approach has cystallized the analysis around the axiomatic formulation of the (desirable or conventional) properties of the ‘social welfare function’. Social utility is usually postulated as a function of the ordinally described personal utility levels attained by each of the individual members for the society in question. The only other property on which something like a general consensus of opinion seems to exist is that ‘the social welfare is increased whenever at least one of the individual utilities on which it depends is raised while none is reduced’ (Leontief, 1966, p. 27). Keywords: Social Welfare; Social Choice; Individual Preference; Social Welfare Function; Individual Welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-06876-0_14 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-06876-0_14 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan |
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