O „metamorfozach” ekonomii dobrobytu
On “metamorphoses” of the Welfare Economics

Summary/Abstract: In the article the history of the Welfare Economics (EW) is outlined. The “hybrid character” of this theoretical concept is stressed as well as “eternal quarrels” concerning the “scientific being” of this mental construct, mainly “the old one” (OWE) as a “normative heresy, lacking in any explanatory power” (the part belongs, in fact, to the “folklore” of the subject). Since the early scientific activity of Kenneth Arrow, the center of “new” WE (NWE) has been moving to the social choice theory, preferences aggregation, energetic policy, bio-economics and the environmental economics. The paper aims to notice a “horizontal mutation” of WE. The ideas of sustainability of socio-economic development can be “included” into research field of WE: J. Heal’s “Dynamic Welfare Eonomics” (DWE) and J. Gowdy’s “New Welfare Economics for Sustainability” (NWES). The conceptions of H. Hotelling, J. Hartwick, R. Solow and the (basic) problem of “limits of substitution” are mentioned (as well as s.c. “green mutations” of economics’ rules and categories). The importance of discounting principles is also stressed.

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