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Social welfare functionals and interpersonal comparability

In: Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare

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d'Aspremont, Claude
Gevers, Louis

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Abstract

This chapter reviews the SWFL approach to social choice. It does not attempt to be a complete and systematic survey of existing results, but to give a critical assesment of the main axioms and their role in filtering the ethically relevant information, in particular the measurability and comparability properties of individual evaluation functions. Social welfare functionals are defined formally together with closely related concepts. After adducing a good number of examples, we elaborate on the meaning of the SWFL domain of definition and we sketch some alternative approaches. Several types of axioms are considered; some of them are used to filter the relevant information while others express collective efficiency or equity requirements. Then, to illustrate the various tradeoffs among these axioms, selected characterisation results are presented; most of them are cast in what we call the formally welfarist framework. Finally, we have assembled some other characterisations which eschew either invariance properties or the formally welfarist framework. We discuss the treatment of two sets of social alternatives endowed with an enriched structure, viz. the set of classical exchange economies and the complete set of lotteries one can define on an abstract set of pure alternatives. As an introduction to the latter discussion, we elaborate on the difficulties raised by social evaluation when risks and uncertainty are taken explicitly into account.

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This chapter was published in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.) Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, , chapter 10, pages 459-541, 2002.

This item is provided by Elsevier in its series Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare with number 1-10.

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This chapter was published in the following book, which is listed on IDEAS:
K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), 2002. "Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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I0 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General

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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. dÕASPREMONT, Claude, 2005. "Formal welfarism and intergenerational equity," CORE Discussion Papers 2005075, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. A. Baujard(CREM - CNRS), 2006. "From moral welfarism to technical non-welfarism : A step back to Bentham’s felicific calculus of its members," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 200606, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS. [Downloadable!]
  3. Francois Maniquet, 2002. "On the Equivalence between Welfarism and Equality of Opportunity," Economics Working Papers 0022, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Francois Maniquet, 2002. "Social Orderings for the Assignment of Indivisible Objects," Economics Working Papers 0015, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Mabrouk, Mohamed, 2008. "Translation invariance when utility streams are infinite and unbounded," MPRA Paper 18523, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Oct 2009. [Downloadable!]
  6. SCHUMACHER, Ingmar, 2006. "On optimality, endogenous discounting and wealth accumulation," CORE Discussion Papers 2006103, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Dietrich, Franz & List, Christian, 2008. "The aggregation of propositional attitudes: towards a general theory," Research Memoranda 047, Maastricht : METEOR, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization. [Downloadable!]
  8. Mabrouk, Mohamed B.R., 2008. "Translation invariance when utility streams are infinite and unbounded," MPRA Paper 17664, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Oct 2009. [Downloadable!]
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