IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/14783.html

Aggregating Welfare Gains

Author

Listed:
  • Eden, Maya

Abstract

I characterize the set of policy decision rules which, in addition to satisfying the standard Pareto condition and a weak anonymity requirement, utilize only information about the objective effects of a policy change and its associated profile of individual "welfare gains". I establish that, depending on the assumptions made about individual preferences, there is either no social decision rule that satisfies these requirements, or a unique one. I characterize the unique social decision rules under different common definitions of "welfare gains" and common assumptions about individual preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Eden, Maya, 2020. "Aggregating Welfare Gains," CEPR Discussion Papers 14783, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14783
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP14783
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simon Grant & Atsushi Kajii & Ben Polak & Zvi Safra, 2010. "Generalized Utilitarianism and Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(6), pages 1939-1971, November.
    2. Kannai, Yakar, 1970. "Continuity Properties of the Core of a Market," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 38(6), pages 791-815, November.
    3. Roberts, Kevin, 1980. "Price-Independent Welfare Prescriptions," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 277-297, June.
    4. Fleurbaey, Marc & Suzumura, Kotaro & Tadenuma, Koichi, 2005. "Arrovian aggregation in economic environments: how much should we know about indifference surfaces?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 22-44, September.
    5. Le Breton, Michel & Weymark, John A., 2011. "Chapter Seventeen - Arrovian Social Choice Theory on Economic Domains," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 17, pages 191-299, Elsevier.
    6. Fleurbaey, Marc & Blanchet, Didier, 2013. "Beyond GDP: Measuring Welfare and Assessing Sustainability," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199767199.
    7. repec:bla:econom:v:44:y:1977:i:173:p:81-88 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 309-309.
    9. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 2003. "Macroeconomic Priorities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 1-14, March.
    10. Osborne, Dale K, 1976. "Irrelevant Alternatives and Social Welfare," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(5), pages 1001-1015, September.
    11. Charles I. Jones & Peter J. Klenow, 2016. "Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2426-2457, September.
    12. Florian Brandl & Felix Brandt, 2020. "Arrovian Aggregation of Convex Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 799-844, March.
    13. Elisha A. Pazner & David Schmeidler, 1978. "Egalitarian Equivalent Allocations: A New Concept of Economic Equity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 92(4), pages 671-687.
    14. Slivinski, Alan D., 1983. "Income distribution evaluation and the law of one price," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 103-112, February.
    15. Bailey, Martin J, 1979. "The Possibility of Rational Social Choice in an Economy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(1), pages 37-56, February.
    16. Kaneko, Mamoru & Nakamura, Kenjiro, 1979. "The Nash Social Welfare Function," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 423-435, March.
    17. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1950. "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(4), pages 328-328.
    18. Campbell, Donald E, 1992. "Transitive Social Choice in Economic Environments," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 33(2), pages 341-352, May.
    19. Michael Keane & Richard Rogerson, 2012. "Micro and Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: A Reassessment of Conventional Wisdom," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(2), pages 464-476, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Marc Fleurbaey & Koichi Tadenuma, 2007. "Do Irrelevant Commodities Matter?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(4), pages 1143-1174, July.
    2. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2025. "Universal social welfare orderings and risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    3. Sprumont, Yves, 2018. "Belief-weighted Nash aggregation of Savage preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 222-245.
    4. BOSSERT, Walter & WEYMARK, J.A., 2006. "Social Choice: Recent Developments," Cahiers de recherche 2006-01, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    5. Matthew D. Adler & Koen Decancq, 2021. "Well-Being Measurement," Working Papers 2105, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    6. Le Breton, Michel & Weymark, John A., 2002. "Arrovian Social Choice Theory on Economic Domains," IDEI Working Papers 143, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse, revised Sep 2003.
    7. Yew‐Kwang Ng, 1981. "Bentham or Nash? On the Acceptable Form of Social Welfare Functions," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 57(3), pages 238-250, September.
    8. John Komlos, 2016. "Growth of Income and Welfare in the U.S. 1979-2011," CESifo Working Paper Series 5880, CESifo.
    9. Daske, Thomas, 2021. "The Incentive Costs of Welfare Judgments," EconStor Preprints 230318, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    10. Marc Fleurbaey & Guillaume Gaulier, 2009. "International Comparisons of Living Standards by Equivalent Incomes," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 111(3), pages 597-624, September.
    11. Jean-François Laslier, 2004. "Strategic Approval Voting in a large electorate," Working Papers hal-00242909, HAL.
    12. Askoura, Youcef & Billot, Antoine, 2021. "Social decision for a measure society," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    13. Jacob Barrett, 2019. "Interpersonal comparisons with preferences and desires," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 18(3), pages 219-241, August.
    14. Marc Fleurbaey & Rossi Abi-Rafeh, 2016. "The Use of Distributional Weights in Benefit–Cost Analysis: Insights from Welfare Economics," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 10(2), pages 286-307.
    15. Hammitt, James K., 2022. "Prevention, treatment, and palliative care: The relative value of health improvements under alternative evaluation frameworks," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    16. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2016. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," MPRA Paper 72578, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Donnacha Bolger & Brett Houlding, 2016. "Reliability updating in linear opinion pooling for multiple decision makers," Journal of Risk and Reliability, , vol. 230(3), pages 309-322, June.
    18. Sprumont, Yves & Zhou, Lin, 1999. "Pazner-Schmeidler rules in large societies," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 321-339, April.
    19. Juan‐Carlos Cordoba & Marla Ripoll & Siqiang Yang, 2024. "The Full Recession: Private Versus Social Costs Of Covid‐19," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 65(1), pages 547-582, February.
    20. M. Ali Khan & Metin Uyanık, 2021. "Topological connectedness and behavioral assumptions on preferences: a two-way relationship," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(2), pages 411-460, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:14783. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.