Normative economics is the branch of economics that incorporates value judgments about what the economy should be like or what particular policy actions should be recommended to achieve a desirable goal. Normative economics looks at the desirability of certain aspects of the economy. It underlies expressions of support for particular economic policies. ‹ The template below is being considered for deletion. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Look up policy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

It is common to distinguish normative economics ("what ought to be" [in economic matters]) from positive economics ("what is"). But many normative (value) judgments are held conditionally, to be given up if facts or knowledge of facts changes, so that a change of values may be purely scientific (Sen, 1970, p, 61). This undermines the common distinction (Wong, 1987, p. 923). But Sen distinguishes basic (normative) judgments, which do not depend on such knowledge, from nonbasic judgments, which do. He finds it interesting to note that "no judgments are demonstrably basic" while some value judgments may be shown to be nonbasic. This leaves open the possibility of fruitful scientific discussion of value judgments (Sen, 1970, pp. 63-64). Positive economics, value-free economics or wertfrei economics (from the German wertfrei, meaning value-free) is the part of economics that focuses on facts and cause-and-effect relationships. ...

See also

• Positive economics
• Distribution (economics)
• Justice (economics)
• Welfare economics
• Social welfare function
• Social choice theory

Positive economics, value-free economics or wertfrei economics (from the German wertfrei, meaning value-free) is the part of economics that focuses on facts and cause-and-effect relationships. ... Distribution in economics is the way total output and income from it is distributed among individuals and among factors of production (such as between labor and capital) (Samuelson and Nordhaus, 2001, p. ... Just in many usages, including economic ones, may express ethical acceptance of some possible social state(s) against which other possible social states are measured. ... Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the allocational efficiency of a macroeconomy and the income distribution associated with it. ... A social welfare function, in welfare economics, is a function which gives a measure of the material welfare of society, given a number of economic variables as inputs. ... Social choice theory studies how individual preferences are aggregated to form a collective preference. ...

References

• Milton Friedman (1953). "The Methodology of Positive Economics," Essays in Positive Economics
• John C. Harsanyi, 1987, “value judgemts," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 4, pp. 792-93
• Daniel M. Hausman and Michael S. McPherson (1996). Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Phillipe Mongin (2002). "Is There Progress in Normative Economics?", same title in Stephan Boehm, et al., eds., Is There Progress in Economics?
• Amartya K. Sen (1970), Collective Choice and Social Welfare. "5.3 Basic and Nonbasic Judgments" & "5.4 Facts and Values," pp. 59-64.
• Stanley Wong (1987). “positive economics," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 3, pp. 920-21.