Choice, Welfare and Measurement / Edition 1

by Amartya Sen

Overview

Choice, Welfare and Measurement contains many of Amartya Sen's most important contributions to economic analysis and methods, including papers on choice, preference, rationality, aggregation, and measurement. A substantial introductory essay interrelates his diverse concerns, and also analyzes discussions generated by the original papers, focusing on the underlying issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674127784
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/15/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: Choice and Preference

1. Choice Functions and Revealed Preference

2. Behaviour and the Concept to Preference

3. Choice, Orderings and Morality

4. Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioural Foundations of Economic Theory

Part 2: Preference Aggregation

5. A Possibility Theorem on Majority Decisions

6. Quasi-transitivity, Rational Choice and Collective Decisions

7. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Rational Choice under Majority

8. Decision with P.K. Pattanaik

9. Social Choice Theory: A Re-examination

Part 3: Welfare Comparisons and Social Choice

10. Interpersonal Aggregation and Partial Comparability

11. On Ignorance and Equal Distribution

12. On weights and Measure: Informational Constraints in Social Welfare Analysis

13. Interpersonal Comparisons of Welfare

Part 4: Non-Utility Information

The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal

14. Liberty, Unanimity and Rights

15. Personal Utilities and Public Judgments: or What's Wrong with Welfare

16. Economics

17. Equality of What

Part 5: Social Measurement

18. Poverty: an ordinal Approach to Measurement

19. Real National Income

20. Ethical Measurement of Inequality: Some Difficulties

21. Description as Choice

Name Index

Subject Index

What People are Saying About This

Sen's mastery in the fields of social choice, the foundation of welfare economics, and, more broadly, distributive ethics and the measurement problems associated with these fields is unquestioned. This selection of articles fully reflects his work in these areas...A number of papers are classics.

Kenneth J. Acrow

Sen's mastery in the fields of social choice, the foundation of welfare economics, and, more broadly, distributive ethics and the measurement problems associated with these fields is unquestioned. This selection of articles fully reflects his work in these areas...A number of papers are classics.

Editorial Reviews

Many of these papers are classics that one consults again and again. But [the collection] is more than a convenience: one gains something from reading these essays together.

Times Higher Education Supplement - Robert Sugden

Amartya Sen, [the 1998] Nobel Prizewinner in Economics, has helped give voice to the world's poor. And that is no small matter, for the very lives of the world's poor may depend on having their voices heard. In a lifetime of careful scholarship, Sen has repeatedly returned to a basic theme: even impoverished societies can improve the well-being of their least advantaged members. Societies that attend to the poorest of the poor can save their lives, promote their longevity and increase their opportunities through education and productive work. Societies that neglect the poor, on the other hand, may inadvertently allow millions to die of famine—even in the middle of an economic boom, as occurred during the great famine in Bengal, India, in 1943, the subject of Sen's most famous case study...Sen [delivers a] powerful message: annual income growth is not enough to achieve development. Societies must pay attention to social goals as well, always leaning toward their most vulnerable citizens, and overcoming deep-rooted biases to invest in the health and well-being of girls as well as boys. In a world in which 1.5 billion people subsist on less than $1 a day, this Nobel Prize can be not just a celebration of a wonderful scholar but also a clarion call to attend to the urgent needs and hopes of the world's poor.

Time - Jeffrey Sachs

Sen’s mastery in the fields of social choice, the foundation of welfare economics, and, more broadly, distributive ethics and the measurement problems associated with these fields is unquestioned. This selection of articles fully reflects his work in these areas… A number of papers are classics.

Kenneth J. Arrow

Sen's mastery in the fields of social choice, the foundation of welfare economics, and, more broadly, distributive ethics and the measurement problems associated with these fields is unquestioned. This selection of articles fully reflects his work in these areas...A number of papers are classics.

Kenneth J. Acrow

Many of these papers are classics that one consults again and again. But [the collection] is more than a convenience: one gains something from reading these essays together.
— Robert Sugden

Times Higher Education Supplement

Amartya Sen, [the 1998] Nobel Prizewinner in Economics, has helped give voice to the world's poor. And that is no small matter, for the very lives of the world's poor may depend on having their voices heard. In a lifetime of careful scholarship, Sen has repeatedly returned to a basic theme: even impoverished societies can improve the well-being of their least advantaged members. Societies that attend to the poorest of the poor can save their lives, promote their longevity and increase their opportunities through education and productive work. Societies that neglect the poor, on the other hand, may inadvertently allow millions to die of famine—even in the middle of an economic boom, as occurred during the great famine in Bengal, India, in 1943, the subject of Sen's most famous case study...Sen [delivers a] powerful message: annual income growth is not enough to achieve development. Societies must pay attention to social goals as well, always leaning toward their most vulnerable citizens, and overcoming deep-rooted biases to invest in the health and well-being of girls as well as boys. In a world in which 1.5 billion people subsist on less than $1 a day, this Nobel Prize can be not just a celebration of a wonderful scholar but also a clarion call to attend to the urgent needs and hopes of the world's poor.
— Jeffrey Sachs

Time