THE SCOPE AND STATUS OF WELFARE ECONOMICS
THE SCOPE AND STATUS OF WELFARE ECONOMICS
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福利经济学的范围和地位
DOI：
10.1093/oxfordjournals.oep.a041321
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发表时间：
1975
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
J. Hicks
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Hicks
尽管福利经济学似乎已经成为经济学的一个常规、公认的分支--或者至少是经济学教学的一个分支--但在某种程度上，它仍然是一个谜。它经常受到批评，批评者从未得到充分的回应;然而，它幸存下来。这里有一个问题，在这篇文章中，我打算再作一次澄清的尝试，让我们开始先回顾一下历史，即表面上出现的历史，因为我们以后会发现，有许多相关的东西最初并没有出现。当然，这一“官方”历史始于庇古的《福利经济学》（1920）。因为这当然是庇古给这个题目起的名字。如果它在庇古之前就存在了，那么它一定被称为别的东西。庇古对经济福利的定义是著名的：“社会福利的一部分，它可以直接或间接地与货币的衡量标准联系起来。”[1]或者，正如他在后面的地方所说的，“一个社会的经济福利，在于使用国民红利（或者，我们应该说，国民产品）所带来的满足与制造国民红利所带来的不满足之间的平衡。”[2]他认为这些定义是一致的定义，他认为这些定义定义了一个量，这个量（至少在原则上）是可测量的。因此，有些行动或安排有利于增加经济福利，有些则不利于。从这个角度（但我们将看到还有其他角度），他的书的目的是区分那些或多或少有利的东西。在此基础上，他所作的区分无疑是有趣的;它们与现代福利经济学家所作的区分相当吻合。然而，经济福利的概念，事实上，庇古是他们的基础，或者他认为他是他们的基础，然而，被普遍拒绝。没过多久，它就引起了批评。第一个定义认为，福利是一个道德概念，整体和部分的范畴不能适用于它，几乎立即就遭到了反对。“效用”和“福利”之间的关系是复杂的，而“福利”和“效用”之间的关系则不是复杂的。
THOUGH Welfare Economics appears to have settled into the position of a regular, accepted, branch of economics—or at least of economic teaching—it remains to some extent a mystery. It has often been criticized, and its critics have never been fully answered; yet it survives. There is a problem here; I propose, in this essay, to make yet another attempt to clear it up.Let us begin by running through the history, the history (that is) which appears on the surface, for we shall later discover that there is much which is relevant that does not appear at first. This' official'history, of course, begins with Pigou, The Economics of Welfare (1920). For it was certainly Pigou who gave its name to the subject. If it existed before Pigou, it must then have been called something else. The definition of Economic Welfare that is given by Pigou is famous:'that part of social welfare which can be brought, directly or indirectly, into relation with the measuring-rod of money'. 1 Or, as he says in a later place,'the economic welfare of a community consists in the balance of satisfactions from the use of the national dividend (or, as we should say, national product) over the dissatisfactions involved in the making of it'. 2 These definitions, which he thinks he has shown to be consistent definitions, he regards as defining a quantity, which (at least in principle) is measurable. So there are some actions, or some arrangements, which are favourable to increase in economic welfare, some which are not. The purpose of his book, from this angle (but as we shall see there are other angles) is to distinguish between those things which are more or less favourable. The distinctions which he draws, on this basis, are unquestionably interesting; they correspond, pretty well, to those which the modern welfare economist would draw. Yet the concept of Economic Welfare, on which Pigou in fact based them, or thought he was basing them, has nevertheless been very generally rejected. It did not have to wait long before it aroused its critics. It was objected, almost immediately, against the first definition, that welfare is a moral concept, to which the categories of whole and part cannot be applied. The relation between'utility'and'welfare'is complex; the one is not