1 Introduction: Purpose and Summary.- 2  Welfare Economics and the Capability Approach.-  3 Specification and Measurement in the Capability Approach.- 4 An Economic Modeling of Individual Capability.- 5 Philosophical Modification of the Economic Modeling of the Capability Approach: Adaptation, Positionality, and Identity.- 6 From Rawls’s Social Contract to Sen’s Social Choice.- 7 Freedom and Death: Why Did She Not Apply for Public Assistance?.- 8 What Political Liberalism and the Welfare State Left Behind: Chance and Gratitud.- 9 The Birth and Growth of Modern Social Choice Theory: From Arrow to Sen.- 10 Final Remarks: Economic Philosophy of Amartya Sen.-  Epilogue.- References.- Appendix 1 The Capability Theory and Welfare Reform.- Appendix 2 A class of fair distribution rules `a la Rawls and Sen.- Appendix 3 Securing basic well-being for all.

This book inquires into the Capability Approach, a value theory of freedom, which crystalizes the interests of Marx, Welfare Economics, Social Choice, and Ethics. The capability approach has attracted many people as a promising interdisciplinary approach to human well-being and social worlds, finely overarching ethical and economic concerns. It has well challenged essential characteristics of welfare economics, which focuses on the criterion of efficiency with the concept of utility, by explicitly incorporating normative criteria such as agency, well-being and real freedom into positive analysis. However, it has a bit operational and methodological difficulties such that how to estimate an individual capability set which includes potential multi-dimensional functioning vectors. This book reminds the reader of what traditional economics has left behind, by examining historical backgrounds, scrutinizing philosophical foundations and providing an operational formulation of the capability approach: indispensable for understanding what the capability approach is about and what it can achieve.Reiko Gotoh is Professor at the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo

This book provides philosophical foundations of the capability approach This book provides economic formulation of the capability approach This book provides historical perspectives of the capability approach

GPSR Compliance The European Union's (EU) General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) is a set of rules that requires consumer products to be safe and our obligations to ensure this. If you have any concerns about our products you can contact us on ProductSafety@springernature.com. In case Publisher is established outside the EU, the EU authorized representative is: Springer Nature Customer Service Center GmbH Europaplatz 3 69115 Heidelberg, Germany ProductSafety@springernature.com