The capability theory and welfare reform

This essay examines the foundation of welfare reform in the light of Amartya Sen's capability theory and the implications of his theory in the context of contemporary industrialized society. A method to formulate the equality of capabilities and to capture its philosophical meaning is explored from the viewpoint of a fair distributive justice; two concepts of freedom, well‐being freedom and agency freedom ; and the process of human life.     

DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM v - v AND AS WHAT ELSE?

To what extent can Amartya Sen's ideas on freedom, especially his conceptualization of development as freedom, enrich feminist economics? Sen's notion of freedom (as the capability to achieve valued ends) has many attractions and provides important opportunities to analyze gender inequalities. At the same time, Sen's recent emphasis on freedom as the dominant value in judging individual well-being and societal development also contains risks, not least for feminist analysis. We characterize the risks as an underelaboration and overextension of the concept of freedom. Drawing on Sen's earlier work and various feminist theorists, we suggest instead a more emphatically pluralist characterization of capability, well-being, and value, highlighting the distinct and substantive aspects of freedom, as well as of values besides freedom, in the lives of women and men. We illustrate this with reference to women's economic role as caregivers.     

Capabilities as causal powers

The author argues that Sen's capability approach is primarilya philosophical under-labouring exercise aimed at elaboratingcertain central economic categories, and that the philosophicaland methodological underpinnings of Sen's approach are radicallydifferent from those of contemporary welfare economics and mainstreameconomic practice. Sen's notion of ‘capabilities’as the potential functionings to achieve well-being is interpretedhere as a specification of the ontological category of ‘causalpower’, presupposing an open system conception of realitythat contrasts with much of contemporary economic practice.     

An economics for development and peace: With a particular focus on the thought of Ernst F. Schumacher

Ernst F. Schumacher'sSmall is Beautiful seems thoroughly persuasive even at the turn of the century, as reckless material development is increasingly recognized as a threat to peace. This article describes how his thought was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi's and Schumacher's ways of thinking are considered as alternative development theorees, different from any of those stemming from laissez-faire economics or Marxism. The formulation and proliferation of Schumacher's ideas about intermediate technologies are traced in both Indian and global contexts, to evaluate their sufficiency as bases for development. Moreover, their implications for contemporary economics are discussed, with the assistance of Amartya K. Sen's concepts of “capability,” “sympathy” and “commitment,” which are in clear contrast to the conventional concept of “economic man.” Finally, it is concluded that Schumacher's alternative development theories and practices, as well as Sen's economics, may play important roles in development and peace studies in the 21^st century. I am grateful to William Volgor, Michael McPherson, David Schrom and Mark Kurowski for their helpful suggestions on drafts of this article.     

Introduction to special section in honor of Professor Amartya Sen. Fairness and welfare: An introduction

After a very brief review of Sen and his contributions, Sen's views on capability egalitarianism are discussed. At the ultimate level, equality in welfare weights (the utilitarian objective of maximizing the equally weighted sum of individual welfares) is the morally right objective. Ultimately, everyone wants to have high welfare, not equal welfare with others. Capability and welfare egalitarianisms may lead to very low welfare levels for all and hence be unacceptable. However, Sen's capability egalitarianism may be very useful at the practical level, as a means to promote harmony and ultimately high levels of welfare. Other contributions (including one from Sen himself) to this volume are summarized and commented on.     

Perfectionism,Paternalism and Liberalism in Sen and Nussbaum's Capability Approach

The aim of the paper is to analyse the theoretical foundations of human development policies as found in Sen's and Nussbaum's capability approach to development, and to examine to what extent undertaking policies according to the capability approach respects people's freedom to pursue their own conception of the good. The paper argues that policies undertaken according to the capability approach have to be guided by a perfectionist conception of the good; that is, they cannot avoid promoting one certain conception of the human good. Such a perfectionist conception of the human good, and the policies ensuing from it, has often been qualified as paternalist, depriving the human being of choosing her own conception of the good. The paper examines to what extent those fears of paternalism that seem to underlie policies guided by a perfectionist account of the good are legitimate, and to what extent the capability approach can escape those charges of paternalism and respect each person's freedom to pursue the human good as she conceives it.     

A behavioural analysis of the subsistence standard of living

Subsistence is analysed as an endogenous variable, contraryto its conventional exogenous treatment. It is postulated thatthe subsistence-livers perceive their own standard of subsistence,direct their earnings behaviour towards attaining, maintainingor exceeding this standard and, thus, reveal the standard throughthis behaviour. The labour supply function of the working poor,which displays a forward-falling segment at low wages and anupward-rising segment at higher wages, is hypothesised to offermeasures of subsistence and survival standards. The conceptsare rationalised using Sen's concept of ‘freedom of choice’and Arrow's concept of ‘freedom as flexibility’.It is argued that at below-subsistence living, individuals lackfreedom of flexibility in choosing their preferences and thussuffer the loss of freedom of choice—while subsistenceoffers a reasonable minimum of this freedom, the freedom iscompletely lost at the lowest survival standard.     

阿马蒂亚·森发展理论探析

阿马蒂亚.森凭借自己在经济伦理方面的突出贡献,打开了或至少是恢复了一个与现代主流经济学世界迥异的、经济学研究的"另一个世界"。站在这另一个世界中,森向我们昭示了一种相异于主流增长发展、堪称"异端"的另类发展理论。他的这一另类发展理论具有三方面的特点,一是以伦理原则指导发展,二是以理性争取发展,三是以自由看待发展。就当前而言,森的发展理念无疑切中了我们现代社会的发展困境问题。     

阿马蒂亚•森的" 能力方法" 在发展经济学中的应用

1998年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者阿马蒂亚•森首先创立了" 能力方法" 的分析框架,并把发展定义为人类能力的扩展和自由的增进。森的" 能力方法" 对联合国的人类发展报告产生了重大影响。在森的基础上," 能力方法" 得到了一定程度的拓展。森的" 能力方法" 对我国发展计划和政策的制定具有一定的借鉴意义。     

从发展观的演变看阿马蒂亚·森对发展经济学的贡献

随着人类社会的发展,发展观也在变化,其总的演进趋势是由单纯注重国民收入的增长转变为“以人为本”的全面发展观。森的“能力方法”对实现这一演变起到了至关重要的作用。同时,森的发展观对我国的发展战略以及发展计划的制定有着重要的参考价值。     

Freedom in Welfare Economics

This paper discusses the recent economics literature on ranking opportunity sets in terms of freedom. It focuses on (i) the intuitive significance of freedom in assessing economic and public policies, (ii) the measurement of freedom offered by various opportunity sets, and (iii) the conception of opportunity set in a world of interdependence among individuals. This paper also points out some open issues and problems that deserve further investigations.     

Well-being and/or quality of life in EU countries through a multidimensional index of sustainability

The aim of my paper is to demonstrate that Sen's theory of well-being can be applied to make the concept of sustainable human development operational through the building of a multidimensional index of sustainability which takes into account, at the same time, economic, social and environmental variables. This index may be considered an alternative to the current measures of welfare/sustainability since not only conventional measures such as GDP, but also multi-attribute indices, such as Human Development Index (HDI), Genuine Savings, Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) etc., are found to be inadequate to make the concept of sustainable development operational. Therefore, the limitations of these measures of welfare/sustainability justify the search for a new index of sustainability. This index will show, at the operational level, how Sen's theory of well-being can be useful to sustainable development. It was applied to EU countries using the standardised deviation methodology being the closest and most suitable methodology to be adopted for building multidimensional indices. The factor analysis methodology will also be used in my paper. Lastly, the comparison between Sen's trend of sustainability and GDP trend index number-which are both of them applied to Italy-will show how much the criticisms and the limitations directed towards the indicator of GDP are founded.     

Adolph Lowe on Freedom,Education and Socialization

The lifework of Adolph Lowe (1893–1995) was greatly motivated by his struggle with the problem of “freedom and order”. This paper explores Lowe's largely overlooked and under-examined writings on education and political philosophy, important components of his “political economics”. Lowe's concern with the socialization function of education is highlighted and related to his notion of “spontaneous conformity, as well as the ideas of Vygotsky on imaginative children's play and C. S. Peirce on habit-change. Taking Gorman's critique of Schutz's conception of freedom as a point of departure, and drawing on the work of C. Wright Mills, Lowe's own conception of freedom is critically examined. For Lowe, the stronger the commitment to community, the greater is the possibility for individual autonomy without the threat of social disruption.     

AN ALTERNATIVE AXIOMATIZATION OF SEN'S POVERTY MEASURE

We provide an alternative axiomatization of Sen's (1976) poverty measure. We derive the measure from the general definition of a poverty measure by using a version of Sen's rank order axiom, and a substantially weaker form of his normalization axiom. These two axioms, together with a continuity axiom, lead uniquely to the measure suggested by Sen (1976).     

Of clouds and clocks and Keynes: conceptions of reality and the growth of knowledge function of money ∗

In this paper, John Maynard Keynes' General theoryand the concept of money are given an evolutionary interpretation. This interpretation is based on Karl Popper's delightful essay ‘Of clouds and clocks: an approach to the problem of rationality and the freedom of man’. The essay presents two things: Popper's conception of indeterminism and his general theory of abstractions. Popper's general theory concerns the role of abstractions and rule-governed, hierarchical systems of abstractions in structuring an indeterministic and uncertain world. He applies his general theory to science.Popper maintains that science is an abstract, rule-governed, linguistic process that facilitates criticism as a way of learning about our world. Popper calls this the growth of knowledge function of science. Popper's general theory can be applied to Keynes' General theory. Following Popper, I argue for a conception of the economy as a rule-governed, monetary language of commerce that facilitates critically minded inquiry in the domain of ordinary economic transactions. A monetary system facilitates the growth of commonsense knowledge in the economy. I call this the growth of knowledge function of money. An awareness of indeterminism and a growth of knowledge like function of money seem to pervade Keynes' General theory.     

能力—机会框架：理解企业创业和成长的统一视角*

“交易范式”影响下发展出来的主流经济学片面强调激励和契约,无法为理解真实世界的企业创业和成长现象提供有效理论支撑。本文重新构建了一个根植于“生产范式”,尤其是资源—能力理论和演化视角的,并能够适用于理解后发展语境下企业创业和成长现象的统一理论框架——“能力—机会”框架。这个框架包含四个基本命题：第一,当讨论企业创业和成长问题时,本质上都在讨论组织能力和市场机会的问题。第二,能力和机会的来源、类型以及二者系统性的变化过程,共同直接决定了企业的创业选择和成长动力。第三,能力和机会同时具有工业和产品特定性,只能在持续的工业生产和管理过程中内生出来。往往已经存在或有条件创造出什么类型的能力和机会时,才可能出现相应状态的创业和成长活动。第四,后发展语境中的特定组织能力和市场机会,从未因为市场经济制度的存在而自动产生。政府部门和公共研究机构等非市场组织,充当了塑造能力和机会的状态及其变化过程的关键力量。总之,“能力—机会”框架提供了一种显著区别于主流经济学的新研究视角,同时有助于弥合创业研究和企业成长研究长期存在的鸿沟。     

Individuality and the economic order in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

This paper examines Hegel's perspective on the market economy, paying particular attention to how the market fits into his conception of freedom. Hegel's doctrine of freedom implies that market relations realize a distinctive form of freedom; however, due to the ontological deficiencies of this freedom, it must be subsumed under a superior freedom that is realized only within the state. The paper also explains why Hegel, although an economic liberal, does not accept the basic tenets of political liberalism, and why he does not regard economic science as a tool for public policy.     

浙江省创新型经济运行评价及发展对策研究——基于六省市的对比分析

本文在界定创新型经济概念的基础上,结合国内外区域创新能力的相关研究,构建了创新型经济运行评价指标体系,并运用该指标体系,从创新资源、创新过程、创新产出三个方面,对浙江、北京、上海、江苏、广东和山东六省市进行了比较分析,揭示出高级科技人才匮乏、技术供给能力不足、高新技术产业附加值低是制约浙江省创新型经济发展的重大瓶颈。最后,提出适合浙江省创新型经济发展的对策建议。     

Progressive Taxation and the Distribution of Freedom

Freedom of choice in consumption activity can be represented by opportunity sets that are bounded by both budget and time constraints. I argue that, in a society in which income is distributed more unequally than leisure time, a government aiming at leaving freedom distribution unaltered should apply progressive taxation. Since incomes bind freedom only partially when this is bound by time constraints, taxing the rich reduces her/his freedom proportionally less than the reduction in freedom caused by taxation of the poor. The degree of tax progressiveness will be higher if the government aims at redistributing freedom from the rich to the poor.