----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]