When Did Equality Become a Noneconomic Objective

Bibliographic Data

ID2819031
AuthorsJ Persky (0000-0003-2183-9019, Institute for Women's Policy Research, corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume63
Issue4
Pages921-938
Publication date2004-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Economics and Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9246 • E-ISSN: 1536-7150
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1536-7150.2004.00324.x
OpenAlexW2084324729
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited14

This brief survey begins with a suggested procedure for determining whether a given economist viewed a particular goal as an economic or noneconomic objective. Roughly speaking, the approach rests on whether that economist attempted a serious analysis of the tradeoffs between the goal in question and some measure of value. In this view, noneconomic objectives, for any school, include all those objectives that, while recognized as potentially legitimate, are not analyzed in terms of commensurable value measures. Three points to notice about the definition: (1) For any economist, economic objectives should be distinguished from a class of intermediate goods valued largely for their predicted positive impact on production; (2) Some objectives may be altogether dismissed by a school, either as beyond the expertise of economic analysis or as downright harmful; (3) Simply acknowledging the existence of a "cost" to achieving a goal leaves that goal as noneconomic since no attempt at valuation has been made.The paper goes on to sketch three viewpoints toward income equality-that of the classical school as summarized in the work of J. S. Mill, that of the early neoclassicists as represented by Marshall and Pigou, and that of the "new welfare economics" as developed by Kaldor and Hicks. The classical economists valued the relief of poverty, but explicitly attacked anything but the most basic redistributional efforts because of expected dire effects on production. The early neoclassicists built equality implicitly into a utilitarian social welfare function. The "new welfare economics" doubted economists' ability to assess the value of equality, although perhaps not their ability to measure its opportunity cost. Thus the basic argument: both the classicists and the early neoclassicists saw equality as an economic objective, while the new welfare economics was largely built on denying this status to equality

Economics · Macroeconomics · Neoclassical economics · Notice · Pigou effect · Political science · Positive economics · Public economics · Valuation (finance) · Value (mathematics) · Viewpoints · Welfare · Economic Theory and Institutions · Economic Theory and Policy · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Law · Mathematics

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