This paper presents the Paretian Watershed and the fundamental theorems of welfare economics. It distinguishes the British approach (à la Kaldor-Hicks) from the American approach (à la Bergson-Samuelson) to new welfare economics. It develops the more recent domains of happiness economics, the...

This paper briefly presents the life of Abram Bergson (Burk). It summarizes its most important contributions to economic theory : microeconomics, welfare economics, comparative economics and sovietology. The role of value judgments in the construction of social indexes or in the comparison of...