Yongsheng Xu - Böcker

This volume explores several aspects of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s framework for thinking about individual well-being. Called the functioning and capability approach (FCA), this framework radically departs from the conventional approach to the concept of individual well-being in welfare economics insofar as it identifies an individual’s well-being as the value attached to the individual’s achievements along certain dimensions of life and her freedom to choose a vector of such achievements rather than as the individual’s happiness or desire fulfillment. The volume consists of two main parts. Part I outlines and studies the basic conceptual and analytical framework and its major features in detail. Part II of the book is devoted to application of the analytical structure of the FCA to practical problems of measuring well-being, deprivation, and inequality in a society. The book concludes with a discussion of the main conclusions of earlier chapters and the role of social scientists and philosophers in the FCA. This volume will be of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners studying multidimensional well-being, deprivation and inequality.

This volume explores several aspects of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s framework for thinking about individual well-being. Called the functioning and capability approach (FCA), this framework radically departs from the conventional approach to the concept of individual well-being in welfare economics insofar as it identifies an individual’s well-being as the value attached to the individual’s achievements along certain dimensions of life and her freedom to choose a vector of such achievements rather than as the individual’s happiness or desire fulfillment. The volume consists of two main parts. Part I outlines and studies the basic conceptual and analytical framework and its major features in detail. Part II of the book is devoted to application of the analytical structure of the FCA to practical problems of measuring well-being, deprivation, and inequality in a society. The book concludes with a discussion of the main conclusions of earlier chapters and the role of social scientists and philosophers in the FCA. This volume will be of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners studying multidimensional well-being, deprivation and inequality.

This volume brings together papers, which were ?rst presented at the International Conference on Rational Choice, Individual Rights and Non-Welfaristic Normative Economics, held in honour of Kotaro Suzumura at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, on 11–13 March 2006, and which have subsequently gone through the usual process of review by referees. We have been helped by many individuals and institutions in organizing the conference and putting this volume together. We are grateful to the authors of this volume for contributing their papers and to the referees who reviewed the papers. We gratefully acknowledge the very generous fundings by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, through the grant for the 21st Century Center of Excellence (COE) Program on the Normative Evaluation and Social Choice of Contemporary Economic Systems, and by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, through the grant for International Scienti?c Meetings in Japan, and the unstinted effort of the staff of the COE Program at Hitotsubashi University, without which the conference in 2006 would not have been possible. We thank Dr. Martina Bihn, the Editorial Director of Springer-Verlag for economics and business, for her advice and help. Finally, we would like to mention that it has been a great pleasure and privilege for us to edit this volume, which is intended to be a tribute to Kotaro Suzumura’s - mense intellectual contributions, especially in the theory of rational choice, welfare economics, and the theory of social choice. Riverside Prasanta K.

This volume brings together papers, which were ?rst presented at the International Conference on Rational Choice, Individual Rights and Non-Welfaristic Normative Economics, held in honour of Kotaro Suzumura at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, on 11–13 March 2006, and which have subsequently gone through the usual process of review by referees. We have been helped by many individuals and institutions in organizing the conference and putting this volume together. We are grateful to the authors of this volume for contributing their papers and to the referees who reviewed the papers. We gratefully acknowledge the very generous fundings by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, through the grant for the 21st Century Center of Excellence (COE) Program on the Normative Evaluation and Social Choice of Contemporary Economic Systems, and by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, through the grant for International Scienti?c Meetings in Japan, and the unstinted effort of the staff of the COE Program at Hitotsubashi University, without which the conference in 2006 would not have been possible. We thank Dr. Martina Bihn, the Editorial Director of Springer-Verlag for economics and business, for her advice and help. Finally, we would like to mention that it has been a great pleasure and privilege for us to edit this volume, which is intended to be a tribute to Kotaro Suzumura’s - mense intellectual contributions, especially in the theory of rational choice, welfare economics, and the theory of social choice. Riverside Prasanta K.

The papers in this volume explore various issues relating to theories of individual and collective choice, and theories of social welfare. The topics include individual and collective rationality, motivation and intention in economics, coercion, public goods, climate change, and voting theory.