Happiness and capability: Introduction to the symposium

The aim of this symposium is to move beyond the established, narrow measures of well-being. It does so by bringing together insights from the happiness approach and the capability approach, both of which are at the forefront of theorizing on welfare in economics. The reason is that the connection happiness–capability is extremely stimulating and potentially able of opening up a very promising field of research. For this purpose, the symposium consists of overview papers by leading scholars and practitioners and of papers dealing with key conceptual and empirical issues on the frontier of combined happiness and capability research.     

Private child and family serving agencies: Implications of national survey results for policy and managerial practice

The national studies represented in this symposium provide the field with greater understanding of the nature of the private sector's role in child welfare and the complex interrelationships among organizational characteristics, inter-organizational dynamics, and external influences. Research findings from symposium papers are examined through the lens of a private agency manager and implications are derived for managerial practice and policy practice both within the private agency and in relation to public/private child welfare partnerships. Key managerial competencies that may be required to move agencies and the sector towards enhanced organizational performance and child welfare outcomes are discussed.     

Welfare Improvement through International Cooperation as Justification for International Institutions in Global Governance

In this symposium our debates are mainly concerned on the role of ethics, religion, and ideology in economic development. Jochen Schumann provides a study on the economics of the Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Buddhist religions. Confucius is not a religion but has played a central role in the social order in the eastern Asian countries. According to the two main criteria to classify economic systems: (a) the private property and (b) market as a tool to rule resource allocation, the main ideas of Confucius are discussed on basis of original sources of Confucius. The change in economic ideology has a very crucial influence on development of the global economy as well as individual economy. The change of ideology from Marx back to the Confucius has been mainly responsible for the economic transition and the success of the economic development in China since 1978 and is discussed in this symposium.     

The news of the death of welfare economics is greatly exaggerated

The paper reexamines the controversy about Bergson–Samuelson social welfare functions (BSFs) that took place between welfare economists and social choice theorists as a consequence of Arrow’s (1951) impossibility theorem. The 1970’s witnessed a new version of the theorem that was meant to establish that BSFs “make interpersonal comparisons of utility or are dictatorial.” Against this, Samuelson reasserted the existence of well-behaved “ordinalist” BSFs and generally denied the relevance of Arrovian impossibilities to welfare economics. The paper formalizes and reassesses each camp’s arguments. While being also critical of Samuelson’s, it eventually endorses his conclusion that welfare economics was left untouched by the controversy. It draws some connections of BSFs with contemporary normative economics.     

Informed desire and the ambitions of libertarian paternalism

Sunstein and Thaler’s ‘libertarian paternalism’ (LP) is inspired by the findings of behavioural economics. Its ambitious policy agenda promotes interference which does not block free choice when agents fall short of fully informed and rational choice. Their implicit version of the informed desire view of welfare either provides no, or potentially erroneous, guidance to planners. LP thus faces significant implementation problems. To address these LP might adopt a weaker version of the information requirement on desires or an alternative view of welfare. Nonetheless, informational and bounded rationality considerations suggest that LP should be rethought and its level of ambition reduced.     

Social welfare in the light of topic modelling

With an increased focus on social well-being in response to a burgeoning global economy exposing the weaknesses of social welfare policies, research output in the field has grown exponentially. Keeping track of the evolving research themes proves difficult due to the steady rise in the number of studies published in the interdisciplinary field of social welfare. Therefore, researchers need a comprehensive overview to confirm the current shape of the field based on the published research. Using a latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm as a topic modelling technique, this study identified 12 prominent themes from more than 10,000 research outputs on social welfare published from 2000 to 2020 in Scopus-indexed journals. Such an exploratory text-mining approach to literature review provides broad insights into the diversity of research and may serve as a foundation for further in-depth studies. Identifying these 12 thematic areas and their sub-themes allows us to articulate the complexity and diversity of social welfare issues, which go far beyond the field of well-established welfare economics or social work. The study shows that the topic of ‘social welfare’ has not only evolved over time but has significantly broadened its meaning. It can no longer be solely synonymous with institutional social security. We contend that research in this area needs to take into account a broader and more systematic range of determinants constituting the dynamic character of social welfare.     

THE COASE THEOREM: ASSUMPTIONS, APPLICATIONS AND AMBIGUITIES

The consequence is that, whereas the normal way of testing a theory in positive economics is to test its conclusions, the normal way of testing a welfare proposition is to test its assumptions. The significance of this should not be overlooked. In positive economics we often simplify our assumptions as cavalierly as we please, being confident in the knowledge that their appropriateness will be tested when we come to apply the conclusions inherent in them to our observations of the world about us. In welfare economics we can entertain no such confidence. The result is that our assumptions must be scrutinized with care and thoroughness.     

New directions for research on the organizational and institutional context of child welfare agencies: Introduction to the symposium on “The Organizational and Managerial Context of Private Child Welfare Agencies”

This paper argues for a conceptual reorientation to research and practice that emphasizes the prominence of institutional and organizational factors in the lives of those who are involved in child welfare systems. Current child welfare reform efforts are premised on the idea that agencies—their structures, management, and internal approaches to organizing their workforce and frontline services—may be influential drivers of and barriers to innovation in practice and policy. We unpack this premise by providing an introduction to the institutional and organizational context of child welfare practice that highlights the diverse contexts and contributions of public and private child welfare agencies. We then review five domains for future research and present examples of studies that might be undertaken. The paper concludes by introducing the symposium papers and identifying their contributions to child welfare and human service research.     

A Graphical Exposition of the Economic Theory of Regulation

This article provides a novel graphical exposition of the economic theory of regulation. In particular, we show—within a single graphical construct—a number of features that emerge from the theory. Through a variety of applications we are able to provide an improved understanding of many questions that have vexed economists, including the markets likely to be chosen for regulation, the propensity of regulatory benefits to be spread across interest groups, the symbiotic nature of regulation and cross-subsidization, and the economics of deregulation. We also are able to depict graphically the relationship between the economic theory of regulation and the traditional normative model of regulation, which assumes that regulators maximize social welfare. (JEL D72 , L51 )     

The Government of Disability: economics and power in welfare and work

The term government of disability refers to the ways that the lived experiences of people with accredited impairments are contextualised by economics and power in welfare and work. This paper explores how far a multiple perspective that develops a framework of the government of disability and the ontological ambiguity of impairment can take us towards contemporary understandings of disability, impairment and change in the UK.

The term the ontological ambiguity of impairment describes the ways that understandings of impairment have become more ambiguous, contributing to greater insecurities and fragmentation because of key changes in the government of disability. However, I argue that wider explanations of economic and power relationships are also necessary to develop a critical perspective of the contemporary government of disability, economics, and power in welfare and work.     

From preference to happiness: Towards a more complete welfare economics

Welfare economics is incomplete as it analyzes preference without going on to analyze welfare (or happiness) which is the ultimate objective. Preference and welfare may differ due to imperfect knowledge, imperfect rationality, and/or a concern for the welfare of others (non-affective altruism). Imperfection in knowledge and rationality has a biological basis and the resulting accumulation instinct amplifies with advertising-fostered consumerism to result in a systematic materialistic bias, as supported by recent evidence on happiness and quality of life. Such a bias, in combination with relative-income effects, environmental disruption effects, and over-estimation of the excess burden of taxation, results in the over-spending on private consumption and under-provision of public goods, and may make economic growth welfare-reducing. A cost-benefit analysis aiming even just at preference maximization should offset the excess burden of financing for public projects by the indirect effect through the relative-income effect and by the environmental disruption effect. A cost-benefit analysis aiming at welfare maximization should, in addition, adjust the marginal consumption benefits of public projects upward by a proportion determined by the proportionate excess of marginal utility over marginal welfare of consumption. The environmental disruption effects have also to be similarly adjusted upward. However, the productive contributions of public projects should not be so adjusted.  Welfare economics has achieved much, though still with long-standing weaknesses (e.g., the inability to make non-Pareto comparisons due to the unwillingness or difficulties in making interpersonal comparisons of cardinal utilities). It is not the intention of this paper either to survey the achievements or to remedy the weaknesses. Rather, it is argued that welfare economics is too narrow in focus and should be expanded in a number of aspects to make the analysis more complete and hence more useful. Some of the aspects discussed below have long been known but largely ignored in welfare economic analysis. Some are less well known and controversial points which are nevertheless important for welfare. Received: 22 January 2001/Accepted: 3 April 2002 This paper is revised from the keynote paper of the same title at the Conference on `Economics and the Pursuit of Happiness', Nuffield College, Oxford 2000, and combined with the paper `Towards a welfarist cost-benefit analysis' presented at American Economic Association Meeting, New Orleans, 2001. The paper was revised during my visit to the Division of Applied Economics, Nanyang University, Singapore. I am also grateful to Maurice Salles and two anonymous referees of this journal for helpful comments.     

Conspicuous consumption and satisfaction

Traditional tools of welfare economics identify the envy-related welfare loss from conspicuous consumption only under very strong assumptions. Measured income and life satisfaction offers an alternative for estimating such consumption externalities. The approach is developed in the context of luxury car consumption (Ferraris and Porsches) in Switzerland. Results from household panel data and fixed effects panel regressions suggest that the prevalence of luxury cars in the municipality of residence has a negative impact on own income satisfaction.     

Industrial welfare and the state: nation and city reconsidered

Industrial welfare history presents important challenges to developmental state theories in “late” industrialization. This article expands the debate by examining how nation-states create statutory welfare by addressing institutional variety beyond markets. It is simplistic to argue linear growth of national welfare or of states autonomously regulating markets to achieve risk-mitigation. I contend that welfare institutions emerge from the state’s essential conflict and collaboration with various alternate institutions in cities and regions. Using histories of Europe, India, and Karnataka, I propose a place-based, work-based, and work-place based welfare typology evolving at differential rates. Although economic imperatives exist to expand local risk-pools, it is precisely the alternate institutional diversity that makes late industrial nation-states unable or unwilling to do so. This results in institutionally “thin,” top-down industrial welfare. Ultimately, theories that overly depend on histories of small nations, homogenous nations, or city-states, provide weak tests of the economics of industrial welfare.     

Consequences, opportunities, and procedures

This paper reflects on consequentialism which underlies the traditional normative economics. It asserts that the informational basis of normative economics should be expanded so that the intrinsic value of social choice procedures should be properly taken into account along with the value of their consequences. Three examples – the problem of fair cake division, the role of competition in the promotion of economic welfare, and bilateral trade restrictions – are invoked to pinpoint the services rendered by procedural considerations in making social welfare judgements. The Pareto libertarian paradox is also re-examined within the extended framework incorporating procedural considerations along with consequential considerations. Received: 25 March 1997 / Accepted: 8 July 1997     

Child welfare and the challenge of causal inference

Causal inference refers to the assessment of cause and effect relationships in observational data—i.e., in situations where random assignment is impossible or impractical. Choices involving children in the child welfare system evoke core elements of causal inference—manipulation and the counterfactual. How would a child's circumstances differ if we changed her environment? This article begins with one mathematical approach to framing causal inference, the potential outcomes framework. This methodology is a cornerstone of newer approaches to causal inference. This framework makes clear the identification problem inherent in causal inference and highlights a key assumption often used to identify the model (ignorability or no unobserved confounding). The article then outlines the various approaches to causal inference and organizes them around whether they assume ignorability as well as other key features of each approach. The article then provides guidelines for producing good causal inference. These guidelines emerge from a review of methodological literature as broad ranging as epidemiology, statistics, economics, and policy analysis. These steps will be illustrated using an example from child welfare. The article concludes with suggestions for how the field could apply these newer methods.     

Reconciling normative and behavioural economics: the problems to be solved

We review the problem of reconciling normative and behavioural economics. In conventional welfare economics, individuals’ preferences are assumed to be coherent, and the satisfaction of those preferences is the normative criterion; but this approach breaks down if preferences are incoherent. Traditionally, the preference-satisfaction criterion has been interpreted in three conceptually different ways, emphasising respectively the normative value of happiness, self-assessed well-being, and freedom. If individuals’ preferences are incoherent, these interpretations diverge, leading to fundamentally different strategies for dealing with the reconciliation problem, and new questions are raised about whether normative economics should be addressed to governments or individuals.     

Some neglected determinants of welfare functions

The welfare concept is central to economics and to some topical problems, requiring interdisciplinary research. Psychology, biology and pedagogics may be important contributors. Economists have overemphasized economic, and among these consumption, aspects. A learning process to reduce unhealthy consumption remains topical. On the production side the diversity of labor types has been neglected. Here a central problem is job choice by maximizing welfare. Variables needed are capabilities required by jobs and personality traits. We ignore the number of independent characteristics. Path analysis with inherited and learnable traits may be extended by data on grandparents and on non-cognitive capabilities. A more precise production function of education is badly lacking. Two methods of measuring welfare functions and the shape of the latter are discussed.     

CHRISTMAS ECONOMICS—A SLEIGH RIDE

This article reviews the literature on Christmas economics. First, we present an overall picture of the debate on the potential welfare loss of gift‐giving and we show strategies that reduce the potential welfare loss and might increase the number of presents received. Second, we discuss the effect of Christmas on prices and the business cycle. We provide evidence that at Christmas stock prices and airfares increase, while food prices decrease. (JEL D6, E3, H4, Z1)     

I Frameworks for analysis of course content and practice learning

The authors note that the recent changes to the C.C.E.T.S.W. Guidelines contain no stipulation that the teaching of economics should constitute an integral part of social work education. They argue that it is impossible for social workers and their clients to achieve control of their lives without a knowledge of the economic influences that help to determine them. The authors' conflict with the priorities implied by the C.C.E.T.S.W. Guidelines led them to survey British courses which lead to a professional social work qualification. They found that only 28% teach economics formally, while some evidence suggests that this proportion is declining despite a widespread expression of regret at the absence of economics. The authors attempt to outline the objectives of a relevant economics syllabus for social work students. They conclude that powerful positive and negative arguments exist to support a substantial economics component in social work education and that the present crisis of both welfare and the economy intensifies, but does not create, this need.     

Religion,Ideology and Global Development: CSI Symposium,April 2007, Innsbruck

Transition Studies Review - In this symposium our debates are mainly concerned on the role of ethics, religion, and ideology in economic development. Jochen Schumann provides a study on the...