A New Equity Condition for Infinite Utility Streams and the Possibility of being Paretian

What ethical criterion for intergenerational justice should be adopted, e.g., when faced with the task of managing the global environment? Koopmans' axiomatization of discounted utilitarianism is based on seemingly compelling conditions, yet this criterion leads to hard-to-justify outcomes. The present analysis considers a class of sustainable recursive social welfare functions within Koopmans' general framework. This class is axiomatized by means of a weak equity condition ("Hammond Equity for the Future") and general existence is established. Any member of the class

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“…Impossibility results arising from HEF are further explored in Asheim et al (2007). Here we concentrate on swrs that satisfy HEF.…”

Section: Condition Rs (Restrictedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable recursive social welfare functions

2010

Self Cite

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“…Among many contributions that appeared after Diamond (1965), those which are most relevant in the present context include Asheim, Mitra and Tungodden (2007), Basu and Mitra (2003;, Bossert, Sprumont and Suzumura (2007), Hara, Shinotsuka, Suzumura and Xu (2007) and Svensson (1980). Although these two lines of inquiry are related in the sense that both are concerned with aggregating generational evaluations of their well-beings into the overall social evaluation, they contrast sharply in at least two respects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Multi-profile intergenerational social choice

Bossert

Suzumura

2010

Soc Choice Welf

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Abstract. Ferejohn and Page transplanted a stationarity axiom from Koopmans' theory of impatience into Arrow's social choice theory with an infinite horizon and showed that the Arrow axioms and stationarity lead to a dictatorship by the first generation.We prove that the negative implications of their stationarity axiom are more far-reaching:there is no Arrow social welfare function satisfying their stationarity axiom. We propose a more suitable stationarity axiom, and show that an Arrow social welfare function satisfies this modified version if and only if it is a lexicographic dictatorship where the generations are taken into consideration in chronological order. Journal of Economic Literature Classification No.: D71.

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“…As is argued in Asheim et al (2007), these conditions can be endorsed both from an egalitarian and utilitarian point of view. …”

Section: Axiom 1 (Hammond Equity For the Futurementioning

confidence: 95%

Paretian evaluation of infinite utility streams: An egalitarian criterion

Alcantud

García-Sanz

2010

Economics Letters

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This paper contributes to qualifying the Basu-Mitra approach to the problem of intergenerational social choice, by analyzing the impact of the structure of the feasible set of utilities on Banerjee's (2006) impossibility theorem. We prove that if the utilities that each generation can possess lie in N ∪ {0}, then an explicit expression for a Paretian social welfare function that accounts for a strengthened form of Hammond Equity for the Future can be given.

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A New Equity Condition for Infinite Utility Streams and the Possibility of being Paretian

Cited by 27 publications

References 19 publications

Sustainable recursive social welfare functions

Sustainable recursive social welfare functions

Multi-profile intergenerational social choice

Paretian evaluation of infinite utility streams: An egalitarian criterion

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