This paper develops a conceptual framework, which can accommodate a wide range of value judgments used in ethical evaluations of extended social states and which can be used to differentiate different categories of value judgments by referring to the type of information on which they may be...

The standard theory of rational choice in economics considers an agent's choices to be rational if and only if the agent makes her choices in different choice situations on the basis of a fixed preference ordering defined over the set of all possible options. This implies that a rational agent's...

A welfaristic method of policy evaluation focuses exclusively on the effect of the policy on individuals' utilities. In contrast, a non-welfaristic way of assessing policies attaches some importance to factors other than the effects of policies on individuals' utilities. This paper develops a...

This paper studies measures of group deprivation in a multi-dimensional framework where, for each individual and each attribute under consideration, the only information that one uses is whether the individual is deprived in terms of that attribute. We consider two classes of measures; one class...

In decision-making involving multiple criteria or attributes, the attributes are often divided into core and non-core attributes. A dominance principle is formulated in terms of core attributes, and this principle is applied whenever it is applicable. If, however, the dominance principle defined...

When a society's overall deprivation or living standard is assessed in a multi-attribute framework, the following procedure is often used. First, for each attribute, a summary index is constructed to reflect a society's performance in relation to this attribute. Then, an indicator of the overall...

This paper examines the literature in welfare economics with a focus on individual rights and freedom, two important components in welfare economics. The paper discusses conceptions of rights and freedom intuitively and presents a critical examination of the existing literature

This chapter discusses freedom and its value. We focus on the conceptual structure of freedom and the value of freedom. We also discuss several issues relating to the measurement of freedom and the value of freedom, and the notion of opportunity sets, a key component of the conceptual structure...