- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction: The New Philosophy of Economics
- Laws, Causation, and Economic Methodology
- If Economics Is a Science, What Kind of a Science Is It?
- Realistic Realism about Unrealistic Models
- Why There Is (as Yet) No Such Thing as an Economics of Knowledge
- Rationality and Indeterminacy
- Experimental Investigations of Social Preferences
- Competing Conceptions of the Individual in Recent Economics
- Integrating the Dynamics of Multiscale Economic Agency
- Methodological Issues in Experimental Design and Interpretation
- Progress in Economics: Lessons from the Spectrum Auctions
- Advancing Evolutionary Explanations in Economics: The Limited Usefulness of Tinbergen's Four‐Question Classification
- Computational Economics
- Microfoundations and the Ontology of Macroeconomics
- Causality, Invariance, and Policy
- The Miracle of the Septuagint and the Promise of Data Mining in Economics
- Explaining Growth
- Segmented Labor Market Models in Developing Countries
- What Is Welfare and How Can We Measure It?
- Interpersonal Comparison of Utility
- Subjective Measures of Well‐Being: Philosophical Perspectives
- Facts and Values in Modern Economics
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Abstract and Keywords
There are at least as many views on how the welfare of individuals should be compared as there are authors who write on the subject. An indication of the bewildering range of issues considered relevant in the literature is provided by the book Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being (Elster & Roemer 1991). However, this article plans to interpret the interpersonal comparison of utility narrowly. Although it reviews some traditional approaches along the way, its focus is on what the modern economists mean when they talk about units of utility and how can such utils be compared. It is widely thought that utils assigned to different individuals cannot sensibly be compared at all.
Keywords: well-being, interpersonal comparison, utility, Playing for Real, utils
Ken Binmore , CBE FBA PhD BSc, is a mathematician turned economist and philosopher. He has held chairs at LSE, the University of Michigan and University College London. A wide range of applied work includes the design of major telecom auctions in many countries across the world. As a consequence of the £23.4 billion raised by the telecom auction he organized in the UK, he was described by Newsweek magazine as the “ruthless, poker‐playing economist who destroyed the telecom industry.” He nowadays devotes his time to applying game theory to the problem of the evolution of morality. His recent books include Natural Justice (Oxford University Pess), Does Game Theory Work? (MIT Press), and A Very Short Introduction to Game Theory (Oxford). He is currently a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol and a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at LSE.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction: The New Philosophy of Economics
- Laws, Causation, and Economic Methodology
- If Economics Is a Science, What Kind of a Science Is It?
- Realistic Realism about Unrealistic Models
- Why There Is (as Yet) No Such Thing as an Economics of Knowledge
- Rationality and Indeterminacy
- Experimental Investigations of Social Preferences
- Competing Conceptions of the Individual in Recent Economics
- Integrating the Dynamics of Multiscale Economic Agency
- Methodological Issues in Experimental Design and Interpretation
- Progress in Economics: Lessons from the Spectrum Auctions
- Advancing Evolutionary Explanations in Economics: The Limited Usefulness of Tinbergen's Four‐Question Classification
- Computational Economics
- Microfoundations and the Ontology of Macroeconomics
- Causality, Invariance, and Policy
- The Miracle of the Septuagint and the Promise of Data Mining in Economics
- Explaining Growth
- Segmented Labor Market Models in Developing Countries
- What Is Welfare and How Can We Measure It?
- Interpersonal Comparison of Utility
- Subjective Measures of Well‐Being: Philosophical Perspectives
- Facts and Values in Modern Economics
- Author Index
- Subject Index