IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-02865569.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Neo-Samuelsonian Welfare Economics: From Economic to Normative Agency

Author

Listed:
  • Cyril Hédoin

    (REGARDS - Recherches en Économie Gestion AgroRessources Durabilité Santé- EA 6292 - URCA - Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne - MSH-URCA - Maison des Sciences Humaines de Champagne-Ardenne - URCA - Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne)

Abstract

This paper explores possible foundations and directions for "Neo-Samuelsonian Welfare Economics" (NSWE). I argue that neo-Samuelsonian economics entails a reconciliation problem between positive and normative economics due to the fact that it cuts the relationship between economic agency (i.e. what and who the economic agent is) and normative agency (i.e. what should the locus of welfare analysis be). I explore two possibilities and argue that both are attractive but have radically different implications for the status of normative economics. The first possibility consists in fully endorsing a normative approach in terms of "formal welfarism" which is completely neutral regarding both the locus and the unit measure of welfare analysis. The main implication is then to make welfare economics a branch of positive economics. The second possibility is to consider that human persons should be regarded as axiologically relevant because while they are not prototypical economic agents, they have the ability to represent them both to themselves and to others as reasonable and reliable beings through narrative construction processes. This gives a justification for viewing well-being as being constituted by the persons' preferences, but only because these preferences are grounded on reasons and values defining the identity of the persons.

Suggested Citation

  • Cyril Hédoin, 2019. "Neo-Samuelsonian Welfare Economics: From Economic to Normative Agency," Post-Print hal-02865569, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02865569
    DOI: 10.3917/rpec.211.0129
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02865569. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.