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Intertemporal Social Evaluation

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  • BLACKORBY, Charles
  • BOSSERT, Walter
  • DONALDSON, David

Abstract

Intertemporal social-evaluation rules provide us with social criteria that can be used to assess the relative desirability of utility distributions across generations. The trade-offs between the well-being of different generations implicit in each such rule reflect the underlying ethical position on issues of intergenerational equity or justice. We employ an axiomatic approach in order to identify ethically attractive social evaluation procedures. In particular, we explore the possibilities of using welfare information and non-welfare information in a model of intertemporal social evaluation. We focus on the individuals’ birth dates and lengths of life as the relevant non-welfare information. As usual, welfare information is given by lifetime utilities. It is assumed that this information is available for each alternative to be ranked. Various weakenings of the Pareto principle are employed in order to allow birth dates or lengths of life (or both) to matter in social evaluation. In addition, we impose standard properties such as continuity and anonymity and we examine the consequences of an intertemporal independence property. For each of the Pareto conditions employed, we characterize all social-evaluation rules satisfying it and our other axioms. The resulting rules are birth-date dependent or lifetime-dependent versions of generalized utilitarianism. Furthermore, we discuss the ethical and axiomatic foundations of geometric discounting in the context of our model.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ in its series Cahiers de recherche with number 06-2005.

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Length: 25 pages
Date of creation: 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:mtl:montec:06-2005

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Keywords: intergenerational equity and justice; intertemporal social choice; welfarist and non-welfarist social evaluation;

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References

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  1. Blackorby, C. & Bossert, W. & Donaldson, D., 1999. "Utilitarianism and the Theory of Justice," UBC Departmental Archives 99-20, UBC Department of Economics.
  2. Charles Blackorby & Walter Bossert & David Donaldson, 2005. "Multi-profile welfarism: A generalization," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 253-267, 04.
  3. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 14-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
  4. Blackorby,Charles & Bossert,Walter & Donaldson,David J., 2005. "Population Issues in Social Choice Theory, Welfare Economics, and Ethics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521825511.
  5. Maskin, Eric, 1978. "A Theorem on Utilitarianism," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 93-96, February.
  6. Kelsey, David, 1987. "The Role of Information in Social Welfare Judgements," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 39(2), pages 301-17, June.
  7. Blackorby, C. & Bossert, W. & Donalson, D., 1995. "Birth-Date Dependent Population Ethics: Critical-Level Principles," G.R.E.Q.A.M. 95a24, Universite Aix-Marseille III.
  8. Broome, John, 2006. "Weighing Lives," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199297702, February.
  9. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 2000. "The Value of Limited Altruism," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 37-70, November.
  10. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 1995. "Intertemporal Population Ethics: Critical-Level Utilitarian Principles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(6), pages 1303-20, November.
  11. Roberts, Kevin W S, 1980. "Interpersonal Comparability and Social Choice Theory," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 421-39, January.
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Cited by:
  1. Mabrouk, Mohamed, 2006. "Allais-anonymity as an alternative to the discounted-sum criterion in the calculus of optimal growth I: Consensual optimality," MPRA Paper 10512, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Mohamed Mabrouk, 2005. "Intergenerational anonymity as an alternative to the discounted- sum criterion in the calculus of optimal growth II: Pareto optimality and some economic interpretations," GE, Growth, Math methods 0511007, EconWPA.
  3. Mohamed Mabrouk, 2005. "Intergenerational anonymity as an alternative to the discounted- sum criterion in the calculus of optimal growth I: Consensual optimality," GE, Growth, Math methods 0510013, EconWPA.

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