Welfare Biology as an Extension of Biology. Interview with Yew-Kwang Ng

Abstract

Yew-Kwang Ng is Winsemius professor in economics at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and emeritus professor at Monash University. He has been a member of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia since 1980, and in 2007 received the highest award (Distinguished Fellow) of the Economic Society of Australia. He has published over two hundred papers in leading journals in economics, as well as in biology, cosmology, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. His books include: Welfare Economics; Mesoeconomics: a Micro-Macro Analysis; Social Welfare and Economic Policy; Specialization and Economic Organization; Efficiency, Equality, and Public Policy: with a Case for Higher Public Spending; and Common Mistakes in Economics: by the Public, Students, Economists, and Nobel Laureates. He has been a world leading scholar in welfare economics and mesoeconomics. In 1995 he published a very influential paper Towards Welfare Biology: Evolutionary Economics of Animal Consciousness and Suffering, which launched concern for the situation of animals in the wild and proposed the creation of a new discipline “welfare biology”.