Economic change, while creating innovation and growth, at the same time generates "gales of creative destruction". It is still largely unclear what this concept implies for the task of assessing welfare (and, correspondingly, the need for and scope of policy-making) in a novelty-generating,...

The theoretical consistency and practical applicability of traditional welfare economics has long been subject to controversy. More recently the challenge has been added from evolutionary approaches that the individual preferences on which the welfare calculus is based are themselves subject to...