Welfare, Freedom and Social Choice: a Reply

The editors of this journal have kindly offered me the opportunity to write a “reply” to the essays included in this special number. It is not easy to respond adequately to such a rich collection of challenging ideas and contributions, nor to hide the fact that I am delighted — and feel tremendously honoured — by the occasion and by this wonderful set of essays. The papers cover a wide variety of fields : social choice theory and welfare economics (Blackorby, Donaldson and Weymark; Moulin); bargaining theory and social choice (Roemer); social justice and equality (Cohen; Van Parijs); evaluation of freedom (Pattanaik and Xu); rights and consequentialism (Steiner); evaluation of poverty (Bourguignon and Fields); standards of living (Schokkaert and Van Ootegem). I shall follow the authors from territory to territory, like a solitary “groupie”. But I shall also crane my neck in trying to view one territory from another, to explore some interconnections.

[1]  Amartya Sen,et al.  Welfare, preference and freedom , 1991 .

[2]  H. Moulin.  Interpreting Common Ownership , 1990, Recherches économiques de Louvain.

[3]  P. Pattanaik,et al.  On Ranking Opportunity Sets in Terms of Freedom of Choice , 1990, Recherches économiques de Louvain.

[4]  G. Cohen.  Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods and Capabilities , 1990, Recherches économiques de Louvain.

[5]  P. Parijs.  Equal Endowments as Undominated Diversity , 1990 .

[6]  Putting Rights in Their Place , 1990 .

[7]  E. Schokkaert,et al.  Sen’s Concept of the Living Standard applied to the Belgian Unemployed , 1990, Recherches économiques de Louvain.

[8]  Welfarism and Axiomatic Bargaining Theory , 1990 .

[9]  John A. Weymark,et al.  A Welfarist Proof of Arrow’s Theorem , 1990, Recherches économiques de Louvain.

[10]  F. Bourguignon,et al.  Poverty Measures and Anti-Poverty Policy , 1990, Recherches économiques de Louvain.

[11]  Aristotle,et al.  THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS , 1990 .

[12]  P. Parijs.  The Second Marriage of Justice and Efficiency , 1990, Journal of Social Policy.

[13]  Amartya Sen,et al.  Justice: Means versus Freedoms , 1990 .

[14]  A. Atkinson.  POVERTY AND SOCIAL SECURITY , 1989 .

[15]  G. Cohen,et al.  On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice , 1989, Ethics.

[16]  Richard J. Arneson.  Equality and equal opportunity for welfare , 1989 .

[17]  Robert Nozick,et al.  The examined life , 1989 .

[18]  Christian Seidl,et al.  Welfare and Efficiency in Public Economics , 1988 .

[19]  A. Lindbeck.  Individual freedom and welfare state policy , 1988 .

[20]  A. Shorrocks,et al.  Inequality and poverty orderings , 1988 .

[21]  J. Kornai.  Individual freedom and reform of the socialist economy , 1988 .

[22]  A. Sen,et al.  FREEDOM OF CHOICE: CONCEPT AND CONTENT , 2008 .

[23]  C. Seidl.  Poverty Measurement: A Survey , 1988 .

[24]  J. Riley.  Liberal Utilitarianism: Social Choice Theory and J. S. Mill's Philosophy , 1988 .

[25]  M. Nussbaum.  Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution , 1988 .

[26]  Amartya Sen,et al.  On Ethics and Economics , 1988 .

[27]  Amartya Sen,et al.  The Standard of Living. , 1988 .

[28]  A. Atkinson.  ON THE MEASUREMENT OF POVERTY , 1987 .

[29]  J. Rawls,et al.  Liberty, Equality, and Law: Selected Tanner Lectures on Moral Philosophy , 1987 .

[30]  Amartya Sen,et al.  Gender and cooperative conflicts , 1987 .

[31]  T. Nagel.  The view from nowhere , 1987 .

[32]  J. Roemer.  Equality of Resources Implies Equality of Welfare , 1986 .

[33]  A. Sen,et al.  Commodities and Capabilities , 1987 .

[34]  John E. Roemer,et al.  Equality of Talent , 1985, Economics and Philosophy.

[35]  A. Sen,et al.  Well-Being, Agency and Freedom the Dewey Lectures 1984 * , 1985 .

[36]  D. Parfit.  Reasons and Persons , 1986 .

[37]  Amartya Sen.  Resources, Values, and Development , 1985 .

[38]  E. Thorbecke,et al.  A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures , 1984 .

[39]  Amartya Sen,et al.  Liberty and Social Choice , 1983 .

[40]  A. Sen,et al.  Evaluator Relativity and Consequential Evaluation , 1983 .

[41]  A. Sen,et al.  POOR, RELATIVELY SPEAKING , 1983 .

[42]  Tony Atkinson,et al.  Social Justice and Public Policy , 1982 .

[43]  A. Sen,et al.  Choice, Welfare and Measurement , 1982 .

[44]  A. Sen.  Liberty as Control: An Appraisal , 1982 .

[45]  T. Scanlon,et al.  Utilitarianism and beyond: Contractualism and utilitarianism , 1982 .

[46]  A. Sen,et al.  Utilitarianism and Beyond , 1982 .

[47]  A. Sen,et al.  Rights and Agency , 1982 .

[48]  A. Sen,et al.  Poverty and famines. An essay on entitlement and deprivation [incl. case studies of famines in Bengal, Ethiopia, Sahel, and Bangladesh]. , 1982 .

[49]  Ronald Dworkin,et al.  What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources , 1981 .

[50]  B. Ackerman,et al.  Social Justice in the Liberal State , 1982 .

[51]  K. Suzumura.  Rational Choice, Collective Decision And Social Welfare (位相幾何学と経済学) , 1980 .

[52]  David Donaldson,et al.  Ethical Indices for the Measurement of Poverty , 1980 .

[53]  N. Kakwani.  On a Class of Poverty Measures , 1980 .

[54]  A. Sen,et al.  Equality of What? , 1980, Seven Deadly Economic Sins.

[55]  Dominique Thon,et al.  On Measuring Poverty , 1979 .

[56]  A. Sen,et al.  Personal Utilities and Public Judgements: Or What's Wrong with Welfare Economics? , 1979 .

[57]  A. Sen,et al.  Utilitarianism and Welfarism , 1979 .

[58]  Noriyuki Takayama,et al.  Poverty, Income Inequality, and Their Measures: Professor Sen's Axiomatic Approach Reconsidered , 1979 .

[59]  M. Hoel.  EXTERMINATION OF SELF-REPRODUCIBLE NATURAL RESOURCES UNDER COMPETITIVE CONDITIONS , 1978 .

[60]  D. H. Mellor,et al.  Foundations: Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics and Economics , 2008 .

[61]  Amartya Sen,et al.  On Weights and Measures: Informational Constraints in Social Welfare Analysis , 1977 .

[62]  A. Sen,et al.  Social Choice Theory: A Re-Examination , 1977 .

[63]  A. Sen,et al.  Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory , 1977 .

[64]  The Just Economy , 1976 .

[65]  Peter J. Hammond,et al.  Why ethical measures of inequality need interpersonal comparisons , 1976 .

[66]  Amartya Sen,et al.  Liberty, Unanimity and Rights , 1976 .

[67]  A. Sen,et al.  Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement , 1976 .

[68]  A. Sen,et al.  Real National Income , 1976 .

[69]  T. Scanlon.  Preference and Urgency , 1975 .

[70]  Amartya Sen,et al.  Informational bases of alternative welfare approaches: Aggregation and income distribution , 1974 .

[71]  H. Varian.  Equity, Envy and Efficiency , 1974 .

[72]  J. J. C. Smart,et al.  Utilitarianism: For and Against , 1975 .

[73]  J. J. C. Smart,et al.  Utilitarianism: A critique of utilitarianism , 1973 .

[74]  J. Rawls,et al.  A Theory of Justice , 1971, Princeton Readings in Political Thought.

[75]  A. Sen,et al.  Collective Choice and Social Welfare , 2017 .

[76]  A. Atkinson.  On the measurement of inequality , 1970 .

[77]  A. Sen,et al.  Interpersonal Aggregation and Partial Comparability , 1970 .

[78]  A. Sen,et al.  The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal , 1970, Journal of Political Economy.

[79]  J. Gosling.  Pleasure and desire , 1969 .

[80]  T. Schelling,et al.  The Strategy of Conflict. , 1961 .

[81]  L. A. Goodman,et al.  Social Choice and Individual Values , 1951 .

[82]  P. Samuelson,et al.  Foundations of Economic Analysis. , 1948 .

[83]  A. C. Pigou.  Economics of welfare , 1920 .

[84]  Leoni Levi,et al.  On Weights and Measures , 1863 .