2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
NON-WELFARISTIC FOUNDATIONS OF WELFARE ECONOMICS-PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS AND CONSEQUENTIALISM
| Project/Area Number |
09630006
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
経済理論
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| Research Institution | HITOTSUBASHI UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
SUZUMURA Kotaro HITOTSUBASHI UNIVERSITY, INSTITUTE OF ECONOMICS RESEARCH, PROFESSOR, 経済研究所, 教授 (00017550)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1997 – 2000
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| Keywords | Welfarism / Procedural Fairness / Rights and Liberty / Intrinsic Value of Opportunity / Intrinsic Value of Procedure / Consequentialism / Non-Consequentialism / Deontology |
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| Research Abstract |
Traditional normative economics has been developed on the informational basis which is restrictive in three distinct senses.
1. Welfarism : In evaluating the performance of an economic system, traditional normative economics has focussed its attention exclusively on the consequences generated by the economic system in question, and that the evaluation of consequences has been conducted in terms of welfares people enjoy from these consequences, thereby neglecting the non-welfaristic characteristics of consequences and the non-consequential characteristics of opportunities and procedures.
2. Ordinalism : In evaluating the consequences of an economic system in terms of welfares people enjoy from these consequences, it is assumed that welfares are ordinal in nature, thereby neglecting cardinal importance of welfares altogether.
3. Interpersonal Non-Comparability : Not only are welfares deemed ordinal, but also they are deemed interpersonally non-comparable.
There are already several attempts i
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n the literature to go beyond 2. and 3., viz., to ask what kind of theoretical progress we can attain by permitting cardinality of individual welfares and/or interpersonal comparability of individual welfares. This project was an attempt to go beyond 1., viz., to ask what kind of theoretical progress we can attain by going beyond the boundary of welfarist-consequentialism or even beyond consequentialism as such. We have provided some persuasive reasons to go along these unfamiliar avenues. We have also shown that we can still conduct rigorous theoretical analysis even outside the well-cultivated territory of welfarist-consequentialism. In concrete terms, we have established the following results :
(a) We have provided a neat axiomatization of the concept of consequentialism and non-consequentialism.
(b) We have shown that the Arrovian impossibility theorem on the democratic and rational social choice can be dissipated if we go beyond welfarist-consequentialism.
(c) We have shown that the intrinsic value of procedures can be properly taken into consideration and the Rawlsian concept of pure procedural justice can be neatly analysed in theoretical depth.
(d) We have suggested that these novel approach open a new passage towards an illuminating analysis of such concrete economic institutions as GATT/WTO regime. Less
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