An Evolutionary Approach to Social Welfare (Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy) - Hardcover

Sartorius, Christian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415323355 ISBN 13: 9780415323352

Publisher: Routledge, 2003

Synopsis

While not evident immediately, social norms and values play a crucial role in the theory of social choice. In the first half of the twentieth century, the special acknowledgement by economic theory of the autonomy of individuals and their subjective view of the world had led to the serious problem that socially acceptable decisions could not be made in the absence of unanimity. In this work, social norms and values are reintroduced to overcome this shortcoming by applying a common standard and, thus, making individual preferences comparable. In particular, it is shown, how the adoption of these standards is part of every individual's social development, how the standards themselves arose in the course of social evolution and how human beings were endowed with the necessary learning mechanism by Darwinian evolution in the first place. This impressive, unique book is well informed and clearly written. It will be of great interest to all those students, academics and researchers who are interested in evolutionary economics as well as social welfare and philosophy.

About this title

About the Author

Christian Sartorius is Post-doctoral research fellow in the Energy Systems Unit of the Technical University of Berlin, Germany.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415323355
• ISBN 13: 9780415323352
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272