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The Metric of Opportunity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Robert Sudgen
Robert Sudgen
Affiliation:
University of East Angila
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Extract

There is a long tradition in economics of evaluating social arrangements by the extent to which individuals' preferences are satisfied. This is the tradition of welfarism, which has developed from nineteenth-century utilitarianism. Increasingly, however, the presumption that preference-satisfaction is the appropriate standard for evaluating social arrangements is being challenged by an alternative view: that we should focus on the set of opportunities open to each individual.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , October 1998 , pp. 307 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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