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Welfare, Freedom and Social Choice: a Reply

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Abstract

The editors of this journal have kindly offered me the opportunity to write a “reply” to the essays included in this special number. It is not easy to respond adequately to such a rich collection of challenging ideas and contributions, nor to hide the fact that I am delighted — and feel tremendously honoured — by the occasion and by this wonderful set of essays. The papers cover a wide variety of fields : social choice theory and welfare economics (Blackorby, Donaldson and Weymark; Moulin); bargaining theory and social choice (Roemer); social justice and equality (Cohen; Van Parijs); evaluation of freedom (Pattanaik and Xu); rights and consequentialism (Steiner); evaluation of poverty (Bourguignon and Fields); standards of living (Schokkaert and Van Ootegem). I shall follow the authors from territory to territory, like a solitary “groupie”. But I shall also crane my neck in trying to view one territory from another, to explore some interconnections.

Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3-4: A Special Issue in Honor of Professor A. Sen : Alternatives to Welfarism , 1990 , pp. 451 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1990 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Jean Drèze and Emma Rothschild for helpful comments, and to the National Science Foundation for research support.

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