The News of the Death of Welfare Economics is Greatly Exaggerated

Marc Fleurbaey and Philippe Mongin

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Abstract: The paper reexamines the controversy about Bergson-Samuelson social welfare functions (BSF) that took place between welfare economists and social choice theorists as a consequence of Arrow's impossibility theorem. The 1970's witnessed a new version of the theorem that was meant to establish that BSF "make interpersonal comparisons of utility or are dictatorial''. Against this, Samuelson reasserted the existence of well-behaved "ordinalist'' BSF and generally denied the relevance of Arrovian impossibilities to welfare economics. The paper formalizes and reassesses each camp's arguments. While being also critical of Samuelson's, it eventually endorses his conclusion that welfare economics was left untouched by the controversy. It draws some connections of BSF with contemporary normative economics.

Keywords: Welfare economics; Social choice theory; Social welfare functional; ergson-samuelson social welfare function; Economie du bien-être; Théorie du choix social; Fonction de bien-être social de Bergson-Samuelson; Fonctionnelle de bien-être social; Arrow; Bergson; Samuelson (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00242931v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The news of the death of welfare economics is greatly exaggerated (2005)
Working Paper: The news of the death of welfare economics is greatly exaggerated (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00242931

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