The enormous standing of Pareto optimality in welfare economics, as was argued earlier, relates closely to the hallowed position of utilitarianism in… - Amartya Sen

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The enormous standing of Pareto optimality in welfare economics, as was argued earlier, relates closely to the hallowed position of utilitarianism in traditional welfare economics (before questions were raised about the possibility of interpersonal comparisons of utility). If interpersonal comparisons of utility are dropped, but nevertheless utility is regarded as the only thing of intrinsic value, then Pareto optimality would be the natural surviving criterion, since it carries the utilitarian logic as far forward as possible without actually making any interpersonal comparisons of utility.

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About Amartya Sen

Amartya Kumar Sen (born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for economics.

Also Known As

Native Name: অমর্ত্য সেন
Alternative Names: Amartya Kumar Sen Professor Amartya Kumar Sen
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Additional quotes by Amartya Sen

Reasoning is a robust source of hope and confidence in a world darkened by murky deeds – past and present. It is not hard to see why this is so. Even when we find something immediately upsetting, we can question that response and ask whether it is an appropriate reaction and whether we should really be guided by it. Reasoning can be concerned with the right way of viewing and treating other people, other cultures, other claims, and with examining different grounds for respect and tolerance.

Rather, it is the firmly ‘open’ outlook, which Smith’s ‘impartial spec tator’ invokes, that may be in some need of reassertion today. It can make a substantial difference to our understanding of the demands of impartiality in moral and political philosophy in the interconnected world in which we live.

While this discussion has been rather critical of economics as it stands, it is not my intention to suggest that these problems have been very satisfactorily dealt with in the existing ethical literature, so that all that would need to be done would be to incorporate the lessons from that literature into economics, by, getting it closer to ethics. This, alas, is not the case. In fact, it is arguable that some of these ethical considerations can be helpfully analysed further by using various approaches and procedures utilized in economics itself.

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