Welfare and efficiency in public economics
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Welfare and efficiency in public economics
Springer-Verlag, c1988
- : New York
- : Berlin
Available at 52 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
"Selection of papers presented at a seminar ... Bad Neresheim 1986"--T.p. verso
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Hans-Werner Sinn, Munich, West Germany This book contains 15 papers presented at a conference in Neresheim, West Ger many, in June 1986. The articles were selected by anonymous referees and most of them have undergone substantial revisions since their presentation. The common topic is measurement of welfare, both from efficiency and from equity perspectives. For many economists, welfare is a diffuse, arbitrary and am biguous concept. The papers collected in this book show that this view is not justified. Though not beyond all doubt, welfare theory today is crisp and clear, offering fairly straightforward measuring concepts. It even comes up with numbers that measure society's advantage or disadvantage from specific policy options in monetary units. Politicians get something they can intuitively understand and argue with, and they do not have to be afraid that all this is metaphysics or the result of the scientist's personal value judgements. Some economists, whom I would classify as belonging to the "everything is optimal" school, would claim that providing politicians with numerical welfare measures is superfluous or even dangerous. The world is as it is, and any attempt to give policy advice can only make things worse. I do not share this view. There are good policies and there are bad ones, but it may not be easy to distinguish between them. There is a role for consulting politicians, Dr."
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