Introduction
Welfare economics is an ethic (a method for determining whether an action, behavior, or policy is right or wrong). Many economists endorse it to determine right from wrong: whether an action is ethical/moral vs. unethical/immoral. Those that increase societal well-being are (ethically) right and those that decrease it are wrong, and those that increase it more are ethically preferred to those that increase it less.
“Welfare economics is an atypical form of welfare consequentialism, WC: consequentialist in that whether an act or policy is right or wrong is a function of only its consequences—the [adjective] welfare because the only consequences that matter are the welfare (well-faring) consequences. [But] most welfare...
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Morey, E.R. (2022). Welfare Economics. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1148-1
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