Fair social orderings with other-regarding preferences

We study fairness in economies where humans consume one private good and one public good representing the welfare of other species. We show that a social evaluator cannot be egalitarian with respect to humans while always respecting humans’ unanimous preferences. One solution is to respect unanimous preferences only when doing so does not lead to a decrease in the welfare of other species. Social preferences satisfying these properties reveal surprising connections between concerns for other species, egalitarianism among humans, and unanimity: the latter two imply a form of dictatorship from humans with the strongest preference for the welfare of other species. (JEL D11, D63, H41)

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“…3 For a study of other-regarding preferences between humans in a similar approach, see Decerf and Van der Linden (2015) and Treibich (2019).…”

Section: The Model and A Class Of Social Ordering Functionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fair Social Ordering, Egalitarianism, and Animal Welfare

Fleurbaey

Linden

2021

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

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“…23 The requirement that no individual besides j is made worse off is therefore superfluous. 21 Decerf and Van der Linden ( [8] 2014) refer to this property as No Unanimous Destruction of Resources. For the same reason, two different allocations can never be Pareto indifferent on R A .…”

Section: Axiomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Villar (1988 [46]), Nieto (1991 [32]) and Kolm (1995 [27]) look at the existence of Pareto optimal allocations in the division of a multi-dimensional good, while Velez (2014 [45]) shows the existence of envy-free allocations in the assignment of indivisible goods with monetary transfers. Only Decerf and Van der Linden ( [8] 2014) follow the same approach as this paper, but their more general framework (multi-dimensional goods and a more general domain of preferences) does not allow for characterization results. 7 For a comprehensive presentation of fair social choice, see Fleurbaey and Maniquet 2011 [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Welfare egalitarianism with other-regarding preferences

Treibich

2018

Soc Choice Welf

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We study the fair allocation of a one-dimensional and perfectly divisible good when individuals have other-regarding preferences. Assuming no legitimate claims and purely ordinal preferences, how should society measure social welfare so as to satisfy basic principles of efficiency and fairness? We define the egalitarian equivalent as the size of the egalitarian allocation which leaves the individual indifferent to the current allocation. In two simple models of average and positional externalities, we characterize the class of social preferences which give full priority to the individual with the lowest egalitarian equivalent in the economy.

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“…Note that each v i (x) depends on the whole allocation x, meaning that our formalism can also cover situations with other-regarding preferences (as in Dufwenberg et al, 2011;Decerf and Van der Linden, 2016;Treibich, 2015).…”

Section: An Orderingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fair management of social risk

Fleurbaey

Zuber

2017

Journal of Economic Theory

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International audienceWe provide a general method for extending social preferences defined for riskless economic environments to the context of risk and uncertainty. We apply the method to the problems of managing unemployment allowances (in the context of macroeconomic fluctuations) and catastrophic risks (in the context of climate change). The method guarantees ex post fairness and pays attention to individuals' risk attitudes, while ensuring rationality properties for social preferences, revisiting basic ideas from Harsanyi's celebrated aggregation theorem (Harsanyi, 1955). The social preferences that we obtain do not always take the form of an expected utility criterion, but they always satisfy statewise dominance. When we require social preferences to be expected utilities, we obtain a variant of Harsanyi's result under a weak version of the Pareto principle, and a maximin criterion under a stronger Pareto requirement, whenever the ex post social ordering does not depend on people's risk attitudes. We also show how non-expected utility individual preferences can be accommodated in the approach

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Fair social orderings with other-regarding preferences

Cited by 17 publications

References 15 publications

Fair Social Ordering, Egalitarianism, and Animal Welfare

Fair Social Ordering, Egalitarianism, and Animal Welfare

Welfare egalitarianism with other-regarding preferences

Fair management of social risk

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