A Theory of Fairness and Social Welfare (Econometric Society Monographs) - Softcover

Fleurbaey, Marc; Maniquet, François

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521715342 ISBN 13: 9780521715348

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

The definition and measurement of social welfare have been a vexed issue for the past century. This book makes a constructive, easily applicable proposal and suggests how to evaluate the economic situation of a society in a way that gives priority to the worse-off and that respects each individual's preferences over his or her own consumption, work, leisure, and so on. This approach resonates with the current concern to go "beyond the GDP" in the measurement of social progress. Compared to technical studies in welfare economics, this book emphasizes constructive results rather than paradoxes and impossibilities, and shows how one can start from basic principles of efficiency and fairness and end up with concrete evaluations of policies. Compared to more philosophical treatments of social justice, this book is more precise about the definition of social welfare and reaches conclusions about concrete policies and institutions only after a rigorous derivation from clearly stated principles.

About this title

Book Description

This book proposes a theory of social welfare that draws from the theory of social choice and the theory of fair allocation and encapsulates fairness principles in the definition of social preferences. It shows how fairness principles impose giving priority to the worse-off and can be combined with efficiency principles in order to respect each individual's preferences over the various dimensions of well-being.

About the Author

Marc Fleurbaey is a Research Director of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and serves on the staff of CERSES, the joint research entity of the CNRS and the Université Paris Descartes. He first worked at INSEE, taught subsequently at the Universities of Cergy-Pontoise and Pau, and as of 2011 is a professor at Princeton University. Professor Fleurbaey is a research associate at CORE at the Université Catholique de Louvain, at Sciences-Po in Paris, and at IDEP in Marseilles, and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. He is a former editor of the journal Economics and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press) and is currently a managing editor of Social Choice and Welfare. He is the author, editor or coeditor of seven books, including Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare (2008) and Justice, Political Liberalism, and Utilitarianism: Themes from Harsanyi and Rawls (with Maurice Salles and John Weymark, Cambridge University Press, 2008). His papers on normative and public economics have appeared in leading journals such as Econometrica the Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Economic Theory.

François Maniquet is Professor of Economics at CORE at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and teaches part time at the University of Warwick, UK. He served as an FNRS research associate at the University of Namur, Belgium, until 2005. Professor Maniquet has been a visiting scholar at several research centers, including the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 2001-2. He was awarded the Social Choice and Welfare Prize in 2004, and he received the Koç Prize for the best paper in the Review of Economic Design that same year. Professor Maniquet has published papers on welfare economics, public economics, game theory and political economics in eminent journals such as Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Economic Theory and the American Journal of Political Science. He is currently one of the editors of the Cambridge University Press journal Economics and Philosophy. Professor Maniquet was recently awarded the Francqui Prize, the highest scientific distinction in Belgium.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0521715342
• ISBN 13: 9780521715348
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 414