Welfare economics
The welfare economics ( English welfare economics ), welfare economics or allocation theory deals as a sub-area of economics with the influence of the economic welfare , which results from the allocation of resources . If the allocation takes place between several agents, one also speaks of multi-agent resource allocation .
It examines the effects of economic activity (including the allocation of property rights ) and state influences on the total income of an economy as well as on the distribution of income and benefits between those involved. If two alternative courses of action are compared, both the welfare losses and the welfare gains that individual actors or society as a whole experience compared to another solution are of interest .
The choice of the yardstick to be used to assess an economic situation includes a value judgment, even if the normative character is usually not explicitly pointed out. Welfare economics is therefore a branch of normative economics . A frequently used measure of welfare economics is Pareto efficiency , named after the economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto . In the benefit-cost analysis , which is often used, especially in English-speaking countries, the Kaldor-Hicks criterion is usually used as a yardstick .
As the first representative of this branch of economics, Kenneth J. Arrow received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 1972 . In 1998 Amartya Sen was also honored. The Australian economist Yew-Kwang Ng is also known for his numerous scientific publications on welfare economics.
Principles of Welfare Economy
- The equilibrium of a (functioning, competitive ) market is Pareto-efficient - as long as there are no external effects and no sequence of overlapping generations is considered.
- Every Pareto optimum on a (functioning, competitive) market can be implemented decentrally as a competitive equilibrium.
literature
- Henner Kleinewefers: Introduction to the welfare economy. Theory - application - criticism. , Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-17-020612-0 ( table of contents ; PDF; 247 kB)
- Egon Sohmen : Allocation Theory and Economic Policy , Mohr Siebeck, 1992, ISBN 978-3161460234
- Allan M. Feldman, Roberto Serrano: Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory , 2009, ISBN 1441939881
- Yew-Kwang Ng: Welfare Economics: Introduction and Development of Basic Concepts , 1979, ISBN 978-0333242964
Individual evidence
- ^ W. Max Corden, Peter Forsyth, Christis G. Tombazos: Tribute Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia . In: The Economic Society of Australia (Ed.): The Economic Record . tape 84 , no. 265 , June 2008, p. 267-272 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1475-4932.2008.00467.x (English).