THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL WELFARE IN WELFARE ECONOMICS: A COMPLEX RELATION BETWEEN ETHICS, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

Abstract

The aim of this writing is to contribute to the analysis of the specific aspects in which the relationships between ethics and economics occur. In particular, to show that economics, considered in its neoclassical synthesis, can hardly sustain the distinction between normative economics and positive economics. Since any notion of efficiency linked to social welfare implies sustaining normative propositions in a non-trivial sense. Not only that, the most well-known  results of welfare economics, such as Arrow’s impossibility theorem, are only valid if a very restricted informational structure of utility functions is  considered. In this sense, it is necessary to use a less restrictive framework to think and model differents criteria of social welfare. Considering this, it is shown that the interaction between economics and ethics must be strengthened, since interdisciplinary work allows evaluating public policies from  perspectives that are not always visible to the economists’ own tools.