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The limit of discounted utilitarianism

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  • Jonsson, Adam

    (Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology)

  • Voorneveld, Mark

    (Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics)

Abstract

This paper presents an infinite-horizon version of intergenerational utilitarianism. By studying discounted utilitarianism as the discount factor tends to one, we obtain a new welfare criterion: limit-discounted utilitarianism (LDU). We show that LDU meets standard assumptions of efficiency, equity, and interpersonal comparability, but allows us to compare more pairs of utility streams than commonly-used utilitarian criteria, including the overtaking criterion and the catching-up criterion. We also introduce a principle of compensation for postponements of utility streams and use it to characterize the LDU criterion on a restricted domain.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonsson, Adam & Voorneveld, Mark, 2018. "The limit of discounted utilitarianism," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:1836
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    Cited by:

    1. Geir B. Asheim & Kuntal Banerjee & Tapan Mitra, 2021. "How stationarity contradicts intergenerational equity," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(2), pages 423-444, September.
    2. Feng, Tangren & Ke, Shaowei & McMillan, Andrew, 2022. "Utilitarianism and social discounting with countably many generations," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    3. Adam Jonsson & Mark Voorneveld, 2015. "Utilitarianism on infinite utility streams: summable differences and finite averages," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 3(1), pages 19-31, April.
    4. Christian Tarsney & Teruji Thomas, 2020. "Non-Additive Axiologies in Large Worlds," Papers 2010.06842, arXiv.org.
    5. Jonsson, Adam & Voorneveld, Mark, 2014. "Utilitarianism for infinite utility streams: summable differences and finite averages," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 747, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 15 Apr 2014.
    6. Li, Chen & Wakker, Peter P., 2024. "A simple and general axiomatization of average utility maximization for infinite streams," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    7. Pivato, Marcus, 2022. "A characterization of Cesàro average utility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    8. Adam Jonsson, 2023. "An axiomatic approach to Markov decision processes," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 97(1), pages 117-133, February.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Utilitarianism; intergenerational equity; time preference;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

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