Extended sympathy
Encyclopedia
Extended sympathy in welfare economics
refers to interpersonal value judgments of the form that social state x for person A is ranked better than, worse than, or as good as social state y for person B (Arrow, 1963, pp. 114-15). (For example: better your marginal income should be lower by the same amount that person B 's income rises.) Here any characteristics that define each person (skills, aptitudes, etc.) are distinguished from the rest of the social state and put on a par with conventional measures of wealth insofar as they affect an extended sympathy judgment.
In his seminal work on social choice theory
, Kenneth Arrow
(1963) mentions the ancient lineage of extended sympathy in ethical writings and its basic, if informal, character in many welfare judgments. Arrow's book itself (p. 9) uses individual preference orderings rather than real-valued measures of preferences. This excludes interpersonal comparisons of welfare in a precise sense (invariance of social choices to linear cardinalizations
of individual preference orderings). Extended-sympathy interpersonal comparisons of welfare relax that constraint (Arrow, 1983, pp. 151–2). Such comparisons expand the informational base of welfare-theoretical decisions, as Amartya Sen (1982) has emphasized. Still, variants of Arrow's dictatorial result persist in reformulation (Suzumura, 1997, p. 221).
Welfare economics
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate economic well-being, especially relative to competitive general equilibrium within an economy as to economic efficiency and the resulting income distribution associated with it...
refers to interpersonal value judgments of the form that social state x for person A is ranked better than, worse than, or as good as social state y for person B (Arrow, 1963, pp. 114-15). (For example: better your marginal income should be lower by the same amount that person B 's income rises.) Here any characteristics that define each person (skills, aptitudes, etc.) are distinguished from the rest of the social state and put on a par with conventional measures of wealth insofar as they affect an extended sympathy judgment.
In his seminal work on social choice theory
Social choice theory
Social choice theory is a theoretical framework for measuring individual interests, values, or welfares as an aggregate towards collective decision. A non-theoretical example of a collective decision is passing a set of laws under a constitution. Social choice theory dates from Condorcet's...
, Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Joseph Arrow is an American economist and joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972. To date, he is the youngest person to have received this award, at 51....
(1963) mentions the ancient lineage of extended sympathy in ethical writings and its basic, if informal, character in many welfare judgments. Arrow's book itself (p. 9) uses individual preference orderings rather than real-valued measures of preferences. This excludes interpersonal comparisons of welfare in a precise sense (invariance of social choices to linear cardinalizations
Cardinal utility
In economics, cardinal utility refers to a property of mathematical indices that preserve preference orderings uniquely up to positive linear transformations...
of individual preference orderings). Extended-sympathy interpersonal comparisons of welfare relax that constraint (Arrow, 1983, pp. 151–2). Such comparisons expand the informational base of welfare-theoretical decisions, as Amartya Sen (1982) has emphasized. Still, variants of Arrow's dictatorial result persist in reformulation (Suzumura, 1997, p. 221).