The Ethics and Economics of the Capability Approach

This book inquires into the Capability Approach, a value theory of freedom, which crystalizes the interests of Marx, Welfare Economics, Social Choice, and Ethics. The capability approach has attracted many people as a promising interdisciplinary approach to human well-being and social worlds, finely overarching ethical and economic concerns. It has well challenged essential characteristics of welfare economics, which focuses on the criterion of efficiency with the concept of utility, by explicitly incorporating normative criteria such as agency, well-being and real freedom into positive analysis. However, it has a bit operational and methodological difficulties such that how to estimate an individual capability set which includes potential multi-dimensional functioning vectors. This book reminds the reader of what traditional economics has left behind, by examining historical backgrounds, scrutinizing philosophical foundations and providing an operational formulation of the capability approach: indispensable for understanding what the capability approach is about and what it can achieve.

Reiko Gotoh is a Professor at the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, since 2013. She holds a Ph.D. from Hitotsubashi University. Her research field is Philosophy in Economics, Normative Economics, Reconstruction of Welfare States. Her recent English publications are “Securing Basic Well-being for All,” Review of Social Economy, 76, 4 (with N. Yoshihara) “What political liberalism and the welfare state left behind: chance and gratitude”, H-U. Otto et.al. (eds.), Capability Promoting Policies Enhancing individual and social development, Policy Press. Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya Sen, Cambridge University Press, 2009 (co-edited). Social Bonds as Freedom, Berghahn Books (co-edited). In addition, she is the author of several Japanese books including The Capability Approach, Iwanami-shoten. Economic Philosophy of Well-being, Minerva Shobo, Economic Philosophy of Justice: Rawls and Sen, Toyo-keizai Inc., 2002. Amartya Sen: Economics & Ethics, Jikkyo Shuppan, 2001 (co-authored).