IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/metroe/v64y2013i3p432-447.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluations of Infinite Utility Streams: Pareto Efficient and Egalitarian Axiomatics

Author

Listed:
  • José Carlos R. Alcantud
  • María D. García-Sanz

Abstract

Two factors influence the resolution of the conflict among infinite generations: the consistency/ethical postulates requested; and the utilities that each generation can possess. We contribute to qualifying the Basu-Mitra approach to this problem, that concerns social welfare functions. Firstly we examine efficiency and strengthened forms of Hammond Equity for the Future both when the feasible utilities are [0,1] and natural numbers. This complements Banerjee (Economics Letters, 2006) and Alcantud and Garcia- Sanz (Economics Letters, 2010). Secondly, we analyze the possibility of combining Pareto-efficiency and the spirit of the Hammond Equity principle for both specfications of the feasible utilities. Here the case study is richer since we analyze four different versions of this principle. We conclude that the Anonymity, Hammond Equity for the Future, and Hammond Equity ethics can be combined with weak specifications of the Pareto postulate at a time even through explicit social welfare functions.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • José Carlos R. Alcantud & María D. García-Sanz, 2013. "Evaluations of Infinite Utility Streams: Pareto Efficient and Egalitarian Axiomatics," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(3), pages 432-447, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:metroe:v:64:y:2013:i:3:p:432-447
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/meca.12012
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Toyotaka Sakai, 2003. "Intergenerational preferences and sensitivity to the present," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(26), pages 1-5.
    2. John Roemer & Kotaro Suzumura (ed.), 2007. "Intergenerational Equity and Sustainability," International Economic Association Series, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-23676-9.
    3. Michele Lombardi & Roberto Veneziani, 2009. "Liberal Principles for Social Welfare Relations in Infinitely-Lived Societies," Working Papers 650, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    4. Toyotaka Sakai, 2006. "Equitable Intergenerational Preferences on Restricted Domains," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 27(1), pages 41-54, August.
    5. Kaushik Basu & Tapan Mitra, 2003. "Aggregating Infinite Utility Streams with InterGenerational Equity: The Impossibility of Being Paretian," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(5), pages 1557-1563, September.
    6. Alcantud, José Carlos R., 2012. "Inequality averse criteria for evaluating infinite utility streams: The impossibility of Weak Pareto," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(1), pages 353-363.
    7. Fleurbaey, Marc & Michel, Philippe, 2003. "Intertemporal equity and the extension of the Ramsey criterion," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(7), pages 777-802, September.
    8. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2003:i:26:p:1-5 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Michele Lombardi & Kaname Miyagishima & Roberto Veneziani, 2016. "Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(597), pages 2173-2196, November.
    10. Geir Asheim & Stéphane Zuber, 2013. "A complete and strongly anonymous leximin relation on infinite streams," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(4), pages 819-834, October.
    11. Ram Sewak Dubey & Tapan Mitra, 2011. "On equitable social welfare functions satisfying the Weak Pareto Axiom: A complete characterization," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 7(3), pages 231-250, September.
    12. Hammond, Peter J, 1976. "Equity, Arrow's Conditions, and Rawls' Difference Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(4), pages 793-804, July.
    13. Juan Crespo & Carmelo Nuñez & Juan Rincón-Zapatero, 2009. "On the impossibility of representing infinite utility streams," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 40(1), pages 47-56, July.
    14. Geir Asheim & Walter Bossert & Yves Sprumont & Kotaro Suzumura, 2010. "Infinite-horizon choice functions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(1), pages 1-21, April.
    15. Chiaki Hara & Tomoichi Shinotsuka & Kotaro Suzumura & Yongsheng Xu, 2008. "Continuity and egalitarianism in the evaluation of infinite utility streams," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 179-191, August.
    16. Geir Asheim & Bertil Tungodden, 2004. "Resolving distributional conflicts between generations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 24(1), pages 221-230, July.
    17. Luc Lauwers, 1996. "Rawlsian equity and generalised utilitarianism with an infinite population (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 9(1), pages 143-150.
    18. Geir B. Asheim & Tapan Mitra & Bertil Tungodden, 2007. "A New Equity Condition for Infinite Utility Streams and the Possibility of being Paretian," International Economic Association Series, in: John Roemer & Kotaro Suzumura (ed.), Intergenerational Equity and Sustainability, chapter 4, pages 55-68, Palgrave Macmillan.
    19. Banerjee, Kuntal, 2006. "On the equity-efficiency trade off in aggregating infinite utility streams," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 63-67, October.
    20. Kaushik Basu & Tapan Mitra, 2007. "Possibility Theorems for Equitably Aggregating Infinite Utility Streams," International Economic Association Series, in: John Roemer & Kotaro Suzumura (ed.), Intergenerational Equity and Sustainability, chapter 5, pages 69-84, Palgrave Macmillan.
    21. Alcantud, José C.R. & García-Sanz, María D., 2010. "Paretian evaluation of infinite utility streams: An egalitarian criterion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 209-211, March.
    22. Lauwers, Luc, 1998. "Intertemporal objective functions: Strong pareto versus anonymity," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 37-55, January.
    23. Basu, Kaushik & Mitra, Tapan, 2005. "Possibility Theorems for Aggregating Infinite Utility Streams Equitably," Working Papers 05-05, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    24. Fleurbaey, Marc & Michel, Philippe, 2001. "Transfer principles and inequality aversion, with an application to optimal growth," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-11, July.
    25. Geir B. Asheim & Tapan Mitra & Bertil Tungodden, 2016. "Sustainable Recursive Social Welfare Functions," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Graciela Chichilnisky & Armon Rezai (ed.), The Economics of the Global Environment, pages 165-190, Springer.
    26. Marco Mariotti & Roberto Veneziani, 2009. "‘Non-interference’ implies equality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 32(1), pages 123-128, January.
    27. , R., 2007. "Can intergenerational equity be operationalized?," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(2), June.
    28. Lauwers, Luc, 2010. "Ordering infinite utility streams comes at the cost of a non-Ramsey set," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 32-37, January.
    29. Dubey, Ram Sewak, 2011. "Fleurbaey–Michel conjecture on equitable weak Paretian social welfare order," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 434-439.
    30. Sakamoto, Norihito & 坂本, 徳仁, 2011. "Impossibilities of Paretian Social Welfare Functions for Infinite Utility Streams with Distributive Equity," Discussion Papers 2011-09, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    31. Tjalling C. Koopmans, 1959. "Stationary Ordinal Utility and Impatience," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 81, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    32. Toyotaka Sakai, 2010. "Intergenerational equity and an explicit construction of welfare criteria," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 35(3), pages 393-414, September.
    33. Basu, Kaushik & Mitra, Tapan, 2005. "On the Existence of Paretian Social Welfare Relations for Infinite Utility Streams with Extended Anonymity," Working Papers 05-06, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    34. Svensson, Lars-Gunnar, 1980. "Equity among Generations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(5), pages 1251-1256, July.
    35. Bossert, Walter & Sprumont, Yves & Suzumura, Kotaro, 2007. "Ordering infinite utility streams," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 579-589, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. José Alcantud, 2013. "Liberal approaches to ranking infinite utility streams: when can we avoid interference?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(2), pages 381-396, July.
    2. Alcantud, José Carlos R., 2012. "Inequality averse criteria for evaluating infinite utility streams: The impossibility of Weak Pareto," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(1), pages 353-363.
    3. José Carlos R. Alcantud, 2013. "The impossibility of social evaluations of infinite streams with strict inequality aversion," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 1(2), pages 123-130, November.
    4. Toyotaka Sakai, 2010. "Intergenerational equity and an explicit construction of welfare criteria," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 35(3), pages 393-414, September.
    5. Feng Feng & Yujuan Zheng & José Carlos R. Alcantud & Qian Wang, 2020. "Minkowski Weighted Score Functions of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Values," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-30, July.
    6. Dubey, Ram Sewak & Mitra, Tapan, 2014. "On construction of equitable social welfare orders on infinite utility streams," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 53-60.
    7. Ram Sewak Dubey & Tapan Mitra, 2015. "On social welfare functions on infinite utility streams satisfying Hammond Equity and Weak Pareto axioms: a complete characterization," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 3(2), pages 169-180, October.
    8. Ram Dubey & Tapan Mitra, 2014. "Combining monotonicity and strong equity: construction and representation of orders on infinite utility streams," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(3), pages 591-602, October.
    9. Dubey, Ram Sewak & Laguzzi, Giorgio, 2021. "Equitable preference relations on infinite utility streams," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    10. Sakamoto, Norihito, 2012. "Impossibilities Of Paretian Social Welfare Functions For Infinite Utility Streams With Distributive Equity," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 53(2), pages 121-130, December.
    11. Sakamoto, Norihito & 坂本, 徳仁, 2011. "Impossibilities of Paretian Social Welfare Functions for Infinite Utility Streams with Distributive Equity," Discussion Papers 2011-09, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    12. Dubey, Ram Sewak, 2016. "On construction of social welfare orders satisfying Hammond equity and Weak Pareto axioms," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 119-124.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ram Sewak Dubey & Tapan Mitra, 2011. "On equitable social welfare functions satisfying the Weak Pareto Axiom: A complete characterization," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 7(3), pages 231-250, September.
    2. Michele Lombardi & Kaname Miyagishima & Roberto Veneziani, 2016. "Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(597), pages 2173-2196, November.
    3. José Carlos R. Alcantud, 2013. "The impossibility of social evaluations of infinite streams with strict inequality aversion," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 1(2), pages 123-130, November.
    4. Dubey, Ram Sewak & Mitra, Tapan, 2014. "On construction of equitable social welfare orders on infinite utility streams," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 53-60.
    5. Asheim, Geir B. & d'Aspremont, Claude & Banerjee, Kuntal, 2010. "Generalized time-invariant overtaking," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 519-533, July.
    6. Geir B. Asheim & Tapan Mitra & Bertil Tungodden, 2016. "Sustainable Recursive Social Welfare Functions," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Graciela Chichilnisky & Armon Rezai (ed.), The Economics of the Global Environment, pages 165-190, Springer.
    7. José Alcantud, 2013. "Liberal approaches to ranking infinite utility streams: when can we avoid interference?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(2), pages 381-396, July.
    8. Henrik Petri, 2019. "Asymptotic properties of welfare relations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 853-874, June.
    9. Dubey, Ram Sewak & Laguzzi, Giorgio, 2021. "Equitable preference relations on infinite utility streams," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    10. Alcantud, José Carlos R., 2012. "Inequality averse criteria for evaluating infinite utility streams: The impossibility of Weak Pareto," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(1), pages 353-363.
    11. Kohei Kamaga & Takashi Kojima, 2010. "On the leximin and utilitarian overtaking criteria with extended anonymity," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 35(3), pages 377-392, September.
    12. Toyotaka Sakai, 2016. "Limit representations of intergenerational equity," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(2), pages 481-500, August.
    13. Asheim, Geir B. & Kamaga, Kohei & Zuber, Stéphane, 2022. "Maximal sensitivity under Strong Anonymity," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    14. Geir B. Asheim & Kuntal Banerjee, 2010. "Fixed‐step anonymous overtaking and catching‐up," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 6(1), pages 149-165, March.
    15. Ram Dubey & Tapan Mitra, 2014. "Combining monotonicity and strong equity: construction and representation of orders on infinite utility streams," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(3), pages 591-602, October.
    16. Dubey, Ram Sewak, 2016. "On construction of social welfare orders satisfying Hammond equity and Weak Pareto axioms," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 119-124.
    17. Mariotti, Marco & Veneziani, Roberto, 2012. "Allocating chances of success in finite and infinite societies: The utilitarian criterion," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 226-236.
    18. Sakamoto, Norihito & 坂本, 徳仁, 2011. "Impossibilities of Paretian Social Welfare Functions for Infinite Utility Streams with Distributive Equity," Discussion Papers 2011-09, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    19. Chiaki Hara & Tomoichi Shinotsuka & Kotaro Suzumura & Yongsheng Xu, 2008. "Continuity and egalitarianism in the evaluation of infinite utility streams," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 179-191, August.
    20. Marcus Pivato, 2014. "Additive representation of separable preferences over infinite products," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(1), pages 31-83, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:metroe:v:64:y:2013:i:3:p:432-447. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0026-1386 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.