Characterizing the Nash social welfare relation for infinite utility streams: a note

This note provides an axiomatic analysis of a social welfare ordering over infinite utility streams. We offer two characterizations of an infinite-horizon version of the Nash criterion.Infinite generations, intergenerational equity, the Nash criterion

Welfare ordering of voting weight allocations

This paper studies the allocation of voting weights in a committee representing groups of different sizes. We introduce a partial ordering of weight allocations based on stochastic comparison of social welfare. We show that when the number of groups is sufficiently large, this ordering asymptotically coincides with the total ordering induced by the cosine proportionality between the weights and the group sizes. A corollary is that a class of expectation-form objective functions, including expected welfare, the mean majority deficit and the probability of inversions, are asymptotically monotone in the cosine proportionality

Welfare criteria from choice: the sequential solution

We study the problem of deriving a complete welfare ordering from a choice function. Under the sequential solution, the best alternative is the alternative chosen from the universal set; the second best is the one chosen when the best alternative is removed; and so on. We show that this is the only completion of Bernheim and Rangel's (2009) welfare relation that satisfies two natural axioms: neutrality, which ensures that the names of the alternatives are welfare-irrelevant; and persistence, which stipulates that every choice function between two welfare-identical choice functions must exhibit the same welfare ordering

Equity between overlapping generations

This note is a demonstration that, in the presence of overlapping generations and under standard conditions for a social welfare ordering (Pareto optimality, transitivity, independence), the only ordering consistent with utilitarianism for all people currently alive at any given point in time is one based on weighting all people equally, regardless of their date of birth. In particular, this implies that, under reasonable conditions, the appropriate choice for the pure rate of social time preference is equal to zero.climate change

On Constrained Dual Recoverability Theorems

In a recent paper ["Paretian Welfare Judgements and Bergsonian Social Choice," Economic Journal, Vol. 109, 1999, pp. 204-220], Suzumura proposed a possible way of relating the two schools of "new" welfare economics. According to his proposal, the logical possibility of the Paretian "new" welfare economics can be reduced to the constrained dual choice-functional recoverability of the Pareto-compatible Bergson-Samuelson social welfare ordering by means of the Pareto-compatible and consistent sub-relations thereof. He also identified the necessary and sufficient condition for this crucial property to hold. However, he posed but left open the problem of the constrained dual choice-functional recoverability of the Pareto-compatible Bergson-Samuelson social welfare ordering by means of the Pareto-compatible and transitive sub-relations thereof. The first purpose of this paper is to settle this open question. The second purpose of this paper is to pose and settle related problems of the constrained dual relational recoverability of the Pareto-compatible Bergson-Samuelson social welfare ordering by means of the Pareto-compatible and either consistent or transitive sub-relations thereof.

The Paradoxes of the Liberal Ethics of Non-interference

We analyse the liberal ethics of non-interference applied to social choice. Two liberal principles capturing non-interfering views of society, inspired by J.S. Mill's conception of liberty are examined, which capture the idea that society should not penalise agents after changes in their situation that do not affect others. Two paradoxes of liberal approaches are highlighted. First, it is shown that a restricted view of non-interference, as reflected in the Individual Damage Principle, together with some standard axioms in social choice leads straight to welfare egalitarianism. Second, it is proved that every weakly paretian social welfare ordering that satisfies a general principle of noninterference must be dictatorial. Both paradoxes raise important issues for liberal approaches in social choice and political philosophy.Liberalism, Noninterference, Equality, Impossibility

Fair social decision under uncertainty and belief disagreements

This paper aims to address two issues related to simultaneous aggregation of utilities and beliefs. The first one is related to how to integrate both inequality and uncertainty considerations into social decision making. The second one is related to how social decision should take disagreements in beliefs into account. To accomplish this, whereas individuals are assumed to abide by Savage model’s of subjective expected utility, society is assumed to prescribe, either to each individual when the ex ante individual well-being is favored or to itself when the ex post individual well-being is favored, acting in accordance with the maximin expected utility theory of Gilboa and Schmeidler (J Math Econ 18:141–153, 1989). Furthermore, it adapts an ex ante Pareto-type condition proposed by Gayer et al. (J Legal Stud 43:151–171, 2014), which says that a prospect Pareto dominates another one if the former gives a higher expected utility than the latter one, for each individual, for all individuals’ beliefs. In the context where the ex ante individual welfare is favored, our ex ante Pareto-type condition is shown to be equivalent to social utility taking the form of a MaxMinMin social welfare function, as well as to the individual set of priors being contained within the range of individual beliefs. However, when the ex post individual welfare is favored, the same Pareto-type condition is shown to be equivalent to social utility taking the form of a MaxMinMin social welfare function, as well as to the social set of priors containing only weighted averages of individual beliefs