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As far as I know there are no general works on the history of SWF. However, 
there are some studies on individual contributions to the development of 
SWF concept. 
 
 
 
On Pareto's contribution: 
 
Chipman J. S. (1976/1999), "The Paretian Heritage", Revue europeene des 
sciences sociales et Cahiers Vilfredo Pareto, vol. 14, pp. 65-171, 
reprinted in Wood J., McLure M. (ed.) (1999), Vilfredo Pareto: Critical 
Assessments, Routledge, London. 
 
Bergson A. (1983), "Pareto on Social Welfare", Journal of Economic 
Literature, vol. 21, pp. 40-46. 
 
 
 
On the Bergson-Samuelson SWF: 
 
Bergson A. (1966), Essays in Normative Economics, Harvard University Press, 
Cambridge. 
 
Samuelson P. A. (1981), "Bergsonian Welfare Economics", in Rosefielde S. 
(ed.) (1981), Economic Welfare and the Economics of Soviet Socialism, 
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 223-266, reprinted in Crowley K. 
(ed.) The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A Samuelson, vol. 5., MIT 
Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 3-46. 
 
Arrow K. J. (1983), "Contributions to Welfare Economics", in Brown, E. C., 
Solow, R. M., ed., Paul Samuelson and Modern Economic Theory, McGraw- Hill, 
New York, pp. 15-30. 
 
Chipman J. S. (1982), "Samuelson and Welfare Economics", in Feiwel G  R. 
ed., Samuelson and Neoclassical Economics, Boston and The Hague, 
Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing, pp. 152-184. 
 
 
 
There is a voluminous literature in social choice theory on Kenneth Arrow's 
concept of SWF (which is different from Bergson-Samuelson SWF) and related 
concepts such as Amartya Sen's Social Welfare Functional (for a summary see 
various chapters in the recently published Handbook of Social Choice and 
Welfare, vol. 1), but there is, I think, no comprehensive study of the 
history of social choice theory. You can find some accounts of the history 
in various works of K. Arrow (especially in his personal recollections) and 
Amartya Sen. A heated debate on whether Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is 
relevant to Bergson-Samuelson SWF is shortly summarized, for example, in D. 
C. Mueller, "Public Choice III", CUP, 2003. In addition you should have a 
look at an interesting interpretation of the rise of social choice theory 
in Phillip Mirowski's "Machine Dreams" (CUP, 2002). 
 
 
 
There is also a recent series of papers on "analytical history" of 
Bergson-Samuelson SWF and the "New Welfare Economics" by Kotaro Suzumura. 
For an analysis of scientific progress in these areas, and in social choice 
theory, see Mongin P. (2002), "Is There Progress in Normative Economics?", 
in Boehm S. et al., "Is There Progress in Economics? Knowledge, Truth and 
the History of Economic Thought", Edward Elgar. 
 
 
 
Also, at least some presentations at the Conference on the History of 
Social Choice Theory (University of Caen, 2002) were concerned with the 
history of SWF (e.g. P. K. Pattanaik, "Little and Bergson on Arrow's 
Concept of Social 
Welfare",  available online at 
 
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/economics/research/seminars/papers/pattanaik.pdf 
). 
 
 
 
Most of these works are surveys or rational reconstructions of the history 
so there is still much to be done by a historian. 
 
 
 
I hope you will choose this subject for your Thesis. 
 
 
 
Michal Brzezinski 
Warsaw University 
 
 
 
 
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