A Promising Future for Welfare Economics

Different challenges indeed need to be taken up to restore a future for welfare economics: it should be possible to make recommendations of public policies; either interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible and not required, or their meaning and their status should be clearly defended; a framework to make explicit which value judgements are at stake is needed; and it is necessary to go beyond the Arrovian impossibility to legitimate the use of social welfare function. While the economics of happiness has provided some positive evidences of the necessity to challenge the notion of welfare, the comparative approach and the theory of equity lead us to expect a promising future for a normative welfare economics.