But wouldn’t this be hampered by welfare economics already being (seen as) an existing field of economics?
Also the name “welfare economic” seems like one that students might see as dry or impractical. Micro anecdata point is that when I taught microeconomics and had the students vote on which topics they were interested in “social welfare functions” got among the fewest votes.
The anecdata point is pretty interesting to me- I’m not an economist. Do you think if the field combined things like DALYs vs QUALYS or debates about subjective life expectation or stuff like that would be interesting to students?
I don’t think it would be harmed by existing within normal econ departments- some normal econ depts. have ag economics within them and other places Ag Econ is independent.
Yes, it’s true that Ag Economics (e.g., at Berkeley) presents a pretty good example of the coexistence of separate departments for two very much overlapping fields. Might be worth looking into more detail about how the Ag Econ departments managed to set that arrangement up.
By the way, the stuff is all potentially interesting to idealistic students. I fear I was largely teaching a group of personal-financially-motivated students.
But still, I’m not sure the term “Welfare economics” will bring them in. Worth doing some surveying on, perhaps
But wouldn’t this be hampered by welfare economics already being (seen as) an existing field of economics?
Also the name “welfare economic” seems like one that students might see as dry or impractical. Micro anecdata point is that when I taught microeconomics and had the students vote on which topics they were interested in “social welfare functions” got among the fewest votes.
The anecdata point is pretty interesting to me- I’m not an economist. Do you think if the field combined things like DALYs vs QUALYS or debates about subjective life expectation or stuff like that would be interesting to students?
I don’t think it would be harmed by existing within normal econ departments- some normal econ depts. have ag economics within them and other places Ag Econ is independent.
Yes, it’s true that Ag Economics (e.g., at Berkeley) presents a pretty good example of the coexistence of separate departments for two very much overlapping fields. Might be worth looking into more detail about how the Ag Econ departments managed to set that arrangement up.
By the way, the stuff is all potentially interesting to idealistic students. I fear I was largely teaching a group of personal-financially-motivated students.
But still, I’m not sure the term “Welfare economics” will bring them in. Worth doing some surveying on, perhaps