▪ Abstract Well-being is a complex construct that concerns optimal experience and functioning. Current research on well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research foci and a body of knowledge that is in some areas divergent and in others complementary. New methodological developments concerning multilevel modeling and construct comparisons are also allowing researchers to formulate new questions for the field. This review considers research from both perspectives concerning the nature of well-being, its antecedents, and its stability across time and culture.

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On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(08)61690-6.pdf

Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

A doubling in global food demand projected for the next 50 years poses huge challenges for the sustainability both of food production and of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and the services they provide to society. Agriculturalists are the principal managers of global useable lands and will shape, perhaps irreversibly, the surface of the Earth in the coming decades. New incentives and policies for ensuring the sustainability of agriculture and ecosystem services will be crucial if we are to meet the demands of improving yields without compromising environmental integrity or public health.

/pdf/agricultural-sustainability-and-intensive-production-1h98l920tu.pdf

Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices

We review in detail a number of approaches that have been adopted to try and explain the remarkable observation of our accelerating universe. In particular we discuss the arguments for and recent progress made towards understanding the nature of dark energy. We review the observational evidence for the current accelerated expansion of the universe and present a number of dark energy models in addition to the conventional cosmological constant, paying particular attention to scalar field models such as quintessence, K-essence, tachyon, phantom and dilatonic models. The importance of cosmological scaling solutions is emphasized when studying the dynamical system of scalar fields including coupled dark energy. We study the evolution of cosmological perturbations allowing us to confront them with the observation of the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure and demonstrate how it is possible in principle to reconstruct the equation of state of dark energy by also using Supernovae Ia observational data. We also discuss in detail the nature of tracking solutions in cosmology, particle physics and braneworld models of dark energy, the nature of possible future singularities, the effect of higher order curvature terms to avoid a Big Rip singularity, and approaches to modifying gravity which leads to a late-time accelerated expansion without recourse to a new form of dark energy.

Dynamics of dark energy

This paper presents an overview of poverty, changes in poverty over time, and some of the causes of these changes It opens with a discussion of various concepts of poverty, paying particular attention to recent controversy over nutitional norms and to the debate on whether poverty should be measured by such results as life expectancy or by such inputs as income The comparative success of a wide range of countries in reducing poverty is then assessed, and a detailed examination is made of selected countries; South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tanzania, and Yugoslavia Particular attention is given to the causes of success and to the difficulties of drawing lessons from success stories The paper then focuses on extreme causes of poverty, such as the famines in Bangladesh and Ethiopia in the first part of the 1970s It concludes with a hypothetical dialogue on policy between the author and a developing-country finance minister

Levels of poverty : policy and change

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction, by Prasanta K. PattanaikPart 1: The Lectures Opening Remarks, by Joseph E. StiglitzArrow and the Impossibility Theorem, by Amartya SenThe Arrow Impossibility Theorem: Where Do We Go From Here?, by Eric MaskinCommentary, by Kenneth J. ArrowPart II: Supplemental Materials The Informational Basis of Social Choice, by Amartya SenOn The Robustness of Majority Rule, by Partha Dasgupta and Eric MaskinThe Origins of the Impossibility Theorem, by Kenneth J. ArrowNotes on Contributors

The Arrow Impossibility Theorem

This chapter describes the social welfare functions. A particular class of collective choice rules corresponds to Arrow's social welfare functions (SWF). A social welfare function (henceforth, SWF) is a collective choice rule f the range of which is restricted to the set of or de rings over X. This restriction is to be called condition O on f Arrow's general possibility theorem consists of imposing certain conditions on a social welfare function i and showing that these conditions are mutually incompatible. The domain of the rule i must include all logically possible combinations of individual orderings. If there is some individual J who is almost decisive for any ordered pair of alternatives, then a SWF satisfying conditions U , P and I, implies that J must be a dictator.

Social welfare functions

The subtitle of Isaac Levi’s book, Hard Choices, explains the nature of the problem that he addresses in that classic work: ‘Decision Making under Unresolved Conflict’.1 We have learned greatly from Levi’s analyses of why, despite our best efforts, the valuational conflicts that we face may not always be fully resolved when the point of decision making comes, and how we may nevertheless use systematic reasoning to decide what one should sensibly do despite the presence of unsettled conflicts. Indeed, through a variety of contributions stretching over several decades, Isaac Levi has powerfully illuminated the challenges of decision making in the presence of imperfect information, conflicting evidence, divergent values, discordant commitments, and other sources of internal dissension.2 I seize the wonderful occasion of celebrating Isaac Levi’s work and accomplishments by presenting a series of observations on rational decision making with incompletely resolved internal dissensions. In that context, I comment also on the nature and use of incomplete valuational orderings and the ways and means of extending their reach. I pursue these issues in the form of addressing a series of questions. Sometimes I draw on Levi’s work, and at other times, I comment on differences that we may still have. As will be obvious, even when we disagree, my understanding of these issues is strongly influenced by Levi’s thinking.

Amartya Sen

Papers

Levels of poverty : policy and change

The Arrow Impossibility Theorem

Social welfare functions

Incompleteness and Reasoned Choice

On Some Debates in Capital Theory