Ranking opportunity sets in the space of functionings

Abstract

We develop a ranking of compact, convex and comprehensive opportunity sets defined in the evaluative space of individual functionings. We suppose the existence of a target, that is a multidimensional bliss point in terms of functionings. This leads us to define concepts such as essentiality and freedom in a novel way. As a main result, we give an axiomatic characterization of the ranking obtained by minimizing the Euclidean distance between each opportunity set and the target. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.