Our forthcoming book, Welfare Theory, Public Action and Ethical Values challenges the belief that, until modern welfare economics introduced issues such as justice, freedom and equality, economists adopted what Amartya Sen called “welfarism.” This is the belief that the welfare of society...

This innovative history of welfare economics challenges the view that welfare economics can be discussed without taking ethical values into account. Whatever their theoretical commitments, when economists have considered practical problems relating to public policy, they have adopted a wider...

Verlagsinfo: "Introduction to Welfare theory, public action and ethical values Revisiting the history of welfare economics By Roger E. Backhouse, Antoinette Baujard and Tamotsu Nishizawa The Introduction explains the concepts of welfarism and non-welfarism, relating it to the way economists have...

This paper aims to show that, contrary to the standard understanding of his work, Sen’s idea of justice does not consist in the defense of a capability theory. Under the dominant capability-centered view, Sen’s idea of justice is indeed characterized principally by a switch of focus from...