The Metric of Opportunity
- 1 October 1998
- journal article
- conference paper
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Economics and Philosophy
- Vol. 14 (2) , 307-337
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0266267100003874
Abstract
There is a long tradition in economics of evaluating social arrangements by the extent to which individuals' preferences are satisfied. This is the tradition ofwelfarism, which has developed from nineteenth-century utilitarianism. Increasingly, however, the presumption that preference-satisfaction is the appropriate standard for evaluating social arrangements is being challenged by an alternative view: that we should focus on the set of opportunities open to each individual.This publication has 24 references indexed in Scilit:
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