If economics is the study of how to make the best, or optimal, use of limited resources, welfare economics is concerned with the meaning of the term ‘optimal’ and with the formulation of statements that permit us to say that a given policy...

The branch of economics setting out the rules for maximizing the welfare of society by considering both the size of SOCIAL WELFARE and its distribution. As normative issues are its concern this is one of the most abstract and theoretical branches of...

The total satisfaction residents of a country receive from the consumption of available goods and services. Increasingly there have been attempts to move beyond NATIONAL INCOME measures as a proxy estimate of economic welfare to the use of a wider...

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Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine allocative efficiency within an economy and the income distribution associated with it. It analyzes social welfare, however measured, in terms of...