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Foundations of utilitarianism under risk and variable population

Author

Listed:
  • Dean Spears

    (University of Texas at Austin [Austin], IZA - Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit - Institute of Labor Economics)

  • Stéphane Zuber

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Utilitarianism is the most prominent social welfare function in economics. We present three new axiomatic characterizations of utilitarian (that is, additively-separable) social welfare functions in a setting where there is risk over both population size and individuals' welfares. We first show that, given uncontroversial basic axioms, Blackorby et al.'s (1998) Expected Critical-Level Generalized Utilitarianism is equivalent to a new axiom holding that it is better to allocate higher utility-conditional-on-existence to possible people who have a higher probability of existence. The other two characterizations extend and clarify classic axiomatizations of utilitarianism from settings with either social risk or variable-population, considered alone.

Suggested Citation

  • Dean Spears & Stéphane Zuber, 2022. "Foundations of utilitarianism under risk and variable population," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-03895384, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-03895384
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-022-01440-4
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03895384
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Charles Shaw & Silvio Vanadia, 2022. "Utilitarianism on the front lines: COVID-19, public ethics, and the "hidden assumption" problem," Papers 2205.01957, arXiv.org.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social risk; population ethics; utilitarianism; expected critical-level generalized utilitarianism; prioritarianism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General

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