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7 - John Hicks’s Farewell to Economic Welfarism

How Deeply Rooted and Far Reaching Is His Non-welfarist Manifesto?

from Part II - Developing Modern Welfare Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2021

By
Kotaro Suzumura
Edited by
Roger E. Backhouse ,
Antoinette Baujard  and
Tamotsu Nishizawa
Roger E. Backhouse
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham and Erasmus University Rotterdam
Antoinette Baujard
Affiliation:
Université de Lyon et Université Jean Monnet à Saint-Étienne
Tamotsu Nishizawa
Affiliation:
Teikyo University Japan
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Summary

John Hicks played a crucial role at birth of the “new” welfare economics founded on the informational basis of interpersonally non-comparable and ordinal utilities. Toward the end of the 1950s, however, Hicks took a bold step by declaring his farewell to the welfarist informational basis of normative economics altogether. The purpose of this paper is to gauge the depth and reach of Hicks’s farewell to the welfaristic approach to normative economics.

Keywords

Welfare economicsnew welfare economicssocial welfarecardinalismordinalismethical valuesrightsutilitywelfareequalityfreedomconsequentialismnon-consequentialismwelfarismnon-welfarism
Type
Chapter
Information
Welfare Theory, Public Action, and Ethical Values
Revisiting the History of Welfare Economics
 , pp. 159 - 185
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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