Were the Ordinalists Wrong About Welfare Economics?
Author(s)
Cooter, Robert; Rappoport, Peter
Abstract
Two major episodes of intellectual change defined the modern approach to utility theory and welfare economics: the “marginalist revolution of the 1870s and the “ordinalist revolution” of the 1930s. This article examines the theories of utility and welfare between these two episodes and argues that the ordinalist revolution represented a fundamental change in the questions addressed by economics, not scientific progress in pursuing and unchanging agenda.
