"Value-free economics?"

This important and thoughtful post on the nature of economic analysis and the distinction between positive and normative economics is a must read. The call to reexamine the distinction between science (positive) and values (normative) is provocative and, as a teacher of economics, challenges a fundamental foundation in economic education.

Amartya Sen has argued throughout his career for the robust possibility of reasoning about value issues -- in economics and elsewhere. (A very early place where Sen takes up this topic is in "The Nature and Classes of Prescriptive Judgements"; link.) Much of what Sen brings to this debate within economics, according to Walsh and Putnam, is found in his capabilities theory as a foundation for a theory of welfare or wellbeing. This theory is based on the idea of human functionings; and there is a plain intermingling of factual and evaluative ideas associated with this notion. We need to know what human beings can and want to do, before we can say how well off they are. And this means bringing in orienting human values at the foundations. Putnam draws attention to Martha Nussbaum's list of core human capabilities. Anyone reading these descriptions would agree that they presuppose human values. And Nussbaum (as well as Sen and Putnam) believes that we can rationally discuss and evaluate these. But if welfare economics is to incorporate a substantive notion of human wellbeing, then it plainly cannot be maintained that it is "value-free".

Another important locus for Sen's reintroduction of ethical concepts into economics is his critique of the narrow conception of individual economic rationality. As Sen puts the point in "Rational Fools" (link),

A person thus described may be "rational"in the limited sense of revealing no inconsistencies in his choice behavior, but if he has no use for these distinctions between quite different concepts, he must be a bit of a fool. The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron. Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool decked in the glory of his one all-purpose preference ordering. To make room for the different concepts related to his behavior we need a more elaborate structure. (336)

Sen introduces the idea of "commitments" directly into the concept of economic rationality. Individuals choose among preference rankings based on their commitments -- to each other, to political ideas, to groups with whom they have decided to affiliate. And this brings normative ideas directly into economic decision-making -- and therefore into the domain of economics.