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Utilitarianism or Welfarism: Does it Make a Difference?

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  • Nicolas Gravel

    () (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - Université de la Méditerranée - Aix-Marseille II - Université Paul Cézanne - Aix-Marseille III - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - CNRS : UMR6579)

  • Patrick Moyes

    () (GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée - CNRS : UMR5113 - Université Montesquieu - Bordeaux IV)

Abstract

We show that it is possible to reconcile the utilitarian and welfarist principles under the requirement of unanimity provided that the set of profiles over which the consensus is attained is rich enough. More precisely, we identify a closedness condition which, if satisfied by a class of n-tuples of utility functions, guarantees that the rankings of social states induced by utilitarian and welfarist unanimities over that class are identical. We illustrate the importance of the result for the measurement of unidimensional as well as multidimensional inequalities from a dominance point of view.

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Paper provided by HAL in its series Working Papers with number halshs-00634010.

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Date of creation: 20 Oct 2011
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Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00634010

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Keywords: Unanimity; Utilitarianism; Welfarism; Stochastic Dominance; Inequality;

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  1. Karcher, T. & Moyes, P. & Trannoy, Y., 1993. "The Stochastic Dominance Ordering of Income Distributions of Over Time. I," Papers 9304, Paris X - Nanterre, U.F.R. de Sc. Ec. Gest. Maths Infor..
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  9. Patrick MOYES (GREThA, CNRS, UMR 5113), 2011. "Rearrangements and Sequential Rank Order Dominance. A Result with Economic Applications," Cahiers du GREThA 2011-35, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée.
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  15. Patrick MOYES (GREThA, CNRS, UMR 5113) & Nicolas GRAVEL (Aix-Marseille University and AMSE (GREQAM)), 2011. "Ethically Robust Comparisons of Bidimensional Distributions with an Ordinal Attribute," Cahiers du GREThA 2011-36, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée.
  16. Sen, Amartya K, 1977. "On Weights and Measures: Informational Constraints in Social Welfare Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(7), pages 1539-72, October.
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  21. Madden, Paul, 1996. "Suppes-Sen dominance, generalised Lorenz dominance and the welfare economics of competitive equilibrium: Some examples," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 247-262, August.
  22. Hadar, Josef & Russell, William R, 1969. "Rules for Ordering Uncertain Prospects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 25-34, March.
  23. Udo Ebert, 2004. "Social welfare, inequality, and poverty when needs differ," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 415-448, December.
  24. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1977. "Utility vs equity : Some plausible quasi-orderings," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 365-381, June.
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  27. N. GRAVEL & Patrick MOYES (GREThA UMR CNRS 5113), 2008. "Bidimensional Inequalities with an Ordinal Variable," Cahiers du GREThA 2008-14, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée.
  28. Anthony Shorrocks, 2004. "Inequality and welfare evaluation of heterogeneous income distributions," Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 193-218, July.
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Cited by:
  1. Patrick MOYES (GREThA, CNRS, UMR 5113) & Nicolas GRAVEL (Aix-Marseille University and AMSE (GREQAM)), 2011. "Ethically Robust Comparisons of Bidimensional Distributions with an Ordinal Attribute," Cahiers du GREThA 2011-36, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée.

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