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Utilitarianism and the theory of justice

In: Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare

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Author Info
Blackorby, Charles
Bossert, Walter
Donaldson, David

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Abstract

This chapter provides a survey of utilitarian theories of justice. We review and discuss axiomatizations of utilitarian and generalized-utilitarian social-evaluation functionals in a welfarist framework. Section 2 introduces, along with some basic definitions, social-evaluation functionals. Furthermore, we discuss several information-invariance assumptions. In Section 3, we introduce the welfarism axioms unrestricted domain, binary independence of irrelevant alternatives and Pareto indifference, and use them to characterize welfarist social evaluation. These axioms imply that there exists a single ordering of utility vectors that can be used to rank all alternatives for any profile of individual utility functions. We call such an ordering a social-evaluation ordering, and we introduce several examples of classes of such orderings. In addition, we formulate some further basic axioms. Section 4 provides characterizations of generalized-utilitarian social-evaluation orderings, both in a static and in an intertemporal framework. Section 5 deals with the special case of utilitarianism. We review some known axiomatizations and, in addition, prove a new characterization result that uses an axiom we call incremental equity. In Section 6, we analyze generalizations of utilitarian principles to variable-population environments. We extend the welfarism theorem to a variable-population framework and provide a characterization of critical-level generalized utilitarianism. Section 7 provides an extension to situations in which the alternatives resulting from choices among feasible actions are not known with certainty. In this setting, we discuss characterization as well as impossibility results. Section 8 concludes.

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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 11, pages 543-596, 2002.

This item is provided by Elsevier in its series Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare with number 1-11.

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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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  1. Mikhail Golosov & Larry E. Jones & Michele Tertilt, 2004. "Efficiency with endogenous population growth," Working Papers 630, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
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  2. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2002. "In Defense of Welfarism," Cahiers de recherche 2002-02, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques. [Downloadable!]
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  3. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2001. "The Axiomatic Approach to Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 2001-06, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques. [Downloadable!]
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  4. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2003. "Harsanyi’s Social Aggregation Theorem : A Multi-Profile Approach with Variable-Population Extensions," Cahiers de recherche 03-2003, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter, 2004. "Interpersonal Comparisons Of Well-Being," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 711, University of Warwick, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  6. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2003. "Population Ethics and the Value of Life," Cahiers de recherche 2003-07, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 2004. "Multi-Profile Welfarism : A Generalisation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 710, University of Warwick, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Fleurbaey, Marc & Gary-Bobo, Robert J. & Maguain, Denis, 2002. "Education, Distributive Justice and Adverse Selection," CEPR Discussion Papers 2897, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. BOSSERT, Walter & SPRUMONT, Yves & SUZUMURA, Kotaro, 2004. "The Possibility of Ordering Infinite Utility Streams," Cahiers de recherche 2004-09, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 2004. "Anonymous Single-Profile Welfarism," Cahiers de recherche 04-2004, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ. [Downloadable!]
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  11. Ritxar Arlegi & Miguel Angel Ballester & María del Carmen Marco & Jorge Nieto, 2000. "Variable population egalitarian ethics and the critical-level: A note," Documentos de Trabajo - Lan Gaiak Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra 0013, Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra. [Downloadable!]
  12. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2002. "Critical-Level Population Principles and the Repugnant Conclusion," Cahiers de recherche 2002-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques. [Downloadable!]
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  13. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2005. "Intertemporal Social Evaluation," Cahiers de recherche 2005-06, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques. [Downloadable!]
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