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Choice, Welfare and Measurement
In the course of his distinguished career, Amartya K. Sen has scrutinized the foundations of economic theory and analysis. He has brought into sharper focus such concepts as choice, preference, rationality, aggregation, evaluation, and measurement, and applied these concepts to the economic issues underlying universal social concerns, among them inequality, unemployment, poverty, human welfare, liberty, rights, justice. The twenty essays in this book encompass both these aspects of Sen's economic endeavors.
Kenneth Arrow has written that "Sen's mastery in the fields of social choice, the foundations of welfare economics, and, more broadly, distributive ethics and the measurement problems associated with these fields is unquestioned. The selection of articles fully reflects his work in this area ... a number of the papers are already classics."
The author has provided a substantial introduction to the book that interrelates his diverse concerns and analyzes the wide-ranging discussions that were generated by the original papers, while stressing the central concepts and underlying issues.
His writings are distributed among five topical Choice and Preference, Preference Aggregation, Welfare Comparisons and Social Choice, Non-utility Information, and Social Measurement. The contributions have been collected from many journals in the fields of economics and public affairs and from books that were published between 1966 and 1980.
Amartya K. Sen is Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls College.
Kenneth Arrow has written that "Sen's mastery in the fields of social choice, the foundations of welfare economics, and, more broadly, distributive ethics and the measurement problems associated with these fields is unquestioned. The selection of articles fully reflects his work in this area ... a number of the papers are already classics."
The author has provided a substantial introduction to the book that interrelates his diverse concerns and analyzes the wide-ranging discussions that were generated by the original papers, while stressing the central concepts and underlying issues.
His writings are distributed among five topical Choice and Preference, Preference Aggregation, Welfare Comparisons and Social Choice, Non-utility Information, and Social Measurement. The contributions have been collected from many journals in the fields of economics and public affairs and from books that were published between 1966 and 1980.
Amartya K. Sen is Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls College.
- GenresEconomics
440 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
2 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Amartya Sen
193 books1,451 followersAmartya Kumar Sen is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society’s poorest members.
Sen was best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food. He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a senior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he previously served as Master from the years 1998 to 2004. He is the first Asian and the first Indian academic to head an Oxbridge college.
Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 2006, Time magazine listed him under "60 years of Asian Heroes" and in 2010 included him in their "100 most influential persons in the world".
Sen was best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food. He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a senior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he previously served as Master from the years 1998 to 2004. He is the first Asian and the first Indian academic to head an Oxbridge college.
Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 2006, Time magazine listed him under "60 years of Asian Heroes" and in 2010 included him in their "100 most influential persons in the world".
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 2, 2017
Sen's contributions to economics, public policy and philosophy are profound. He has written many books, and many different KINDS of books. This book, however, is just a collection of essays.
All of the essays in this collection deal with the realm of welfare economics. There is no point in reading every single article, since there is a lot of repetition and crossfertilisation between them. The collection contains some of his best essays. The two related essays, "The Impossibility of the Paretian Liberal", and "Liberty, Unanimity and Rights" are worth the price of admission alone.
The collection suffers, however, from a lack of good editing. Aside from a short introduction by Sen himself, the collection does not feel like a coherent book as much as a selection of random papers.
The only editorial choice is that essays are bundled together, haphazardly, by theme; and all essays naturally relate to the themes of welfare economics - aggregation of utilities, social welfare functions, the conflict between utilitarianism and liberalism (among other moral theories)....
Half of the essays are incomprehensible to 99% of people due to the technical jargon and algebraic formulas contained herein. Nothing is done to mitigate this fact, and little context is given to the technical formulations. As a result, the reward of reading this essays varies greatly depending one's previous acquaintance with formal logic, analytical philosophy and welfare economics literature.
Mathematization and formalization of economics is a mixed blessing, so these essays also have dubious value. Sometimes it makes sense to make one's arguments as logically rigorous as possible. But it is not always clear what the advantages and disadvantages are of formalizing extremely simple insights. Sometimes natural language does the trick equally well, or even better.
Luckily for me the collection contains also plenty of essays written in perfectly lucid and readable prose. Sen's writing, at best, is informative, analytical and even occasionally funny. Out of the 20 essays contained in the collection, about 10 are written in clear and enjoyable, non-technical prose.
If one cares one bit about welfare economics, utilitarianism, liberalism and related issues, Sen's treatment of these many aspects of the field is phenomenal, even if you disagree with his conclusions. The same analytical rigour which metastasizes into occasional algebraic formulas also carries the text from one moment of lucidity to another, from one clever argument to another.
The thematic consistency of the essays makes for a long reading list, but like I said before, it is not necessary to read every single essay to get something out of this impressive if poorly edited collection. For reading, I would recommend, aside from the two aforementioned essays on "Paretian Liberalism", the following: "Equality of What?" (on different moral theories of equality), "Rational Fools" (a criticism of some of the methodological and anthropological assumptions of economics), "Behaviour and the Concept of Preference" (on Revealed Preference and behaviourism), and "Description as Choice" (on methodological realism and pragmatism).
Overall, a chaotic, maddening collection with some absolute gems. Pick and choose wisely.
All of the essays in this collection deal with the realm of welfare economics. There is no point in reading every single article, since there is a lot of repetition and crossfertilisation between them. The collection contains some of his best essays. The two related essays, "The Impossibility of the Paretian Liberal", and "Liberty, Unanimity and Rights" are worth the price of admission alone.
The collection suffers, however, from a lack of good editing. Aside from a short introduction by Sen himself, the collection does not feel like a coherent book as much as a selection of random papers.
The only editorial choice is that essays are bundled together, haphazardly, by theme; and all essays naturally relate to the themes of welfare economics - aggregation of utilities, social welfare functions, the conflict between utilitarianism and liberalism (among other moral theories)....
Half of the essays are incomprehensible to 99% of people due to the technical jargon and algebraic formulas contained herein. Nothing is done to mitigate this fact, and little context is given to the technical formulations. As a result, the reward of reading this essays varies greatly depending one's previous acquaintance with formal logic, analytical philosophy and welfare economics literature.
Mathematization and formalization of economics is a mixed blessing, so these essays also have dubious value. Sometimes it makes sense to make one's arguments as logically rigorous as possible. But it is not always clear what the advantages and disadvantages are of formalizing extremely simple insights. Sometimes natural language does the trick equally well, or even better.
Luckily for me the collection contains also plenty of essays written in perfectly lucid and readable prose. Sen's writing, at best, is informative, analytical and even occasionally funny. Out of the 20 essays contained in the collection, about 10 are written in clear and enjoyable, non-technical prose.
If one cares one bit about welfare economics, utilitarianism, liberalism and related issues, Sen's treatment of these many aspects of the field is phenomenal, even if you disagree with his conclusions. The same analytical rigour which metastasizes into occasional algebraic formulas also carries the text from one moment of lucidity to another, from one clever argument to another.
The thematic consistency of the essays makes for a long reading list, but like I said before, it is not necessary to read every single essay to get something out of this impressive if poorly edited collection. For reading, I would recommend, aside from the two aforementioned essays on "Paretian Liberalism", the following: "Equality of What?" (on different moral theories of equality), "Rational Fools" (a criticism of some of the methodological and anthropological assumptions of economics), "Behaviour and the Concept of Preference" (on Revealed Preference and behaviourism), and "Description as Choice" (on methodological realism and pragmatism).
Overall, a chaotic, maddening collection with some absolute gems. Pick and choose wisely.
to-keep-reference
October 3, 2018While welfarism was not explicitly invoked as a condition on its own, it is in fact—in a particular form—entailed by the conditions that Arrow imposed (the analytical process that yields this result is investigated and assessed in my Choice, Welfare and Measurement, 1982).
Capabilities and Happiness Pág.21
Capabilities and Happiness Pág.21
January 24, 2013
Better brush up on your economic analysis skills i.e. statistics and other economic models, for this dense but essential read; it's Amartya Sen, who is my TOP GURU economist of all time!!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews