IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtl/montec/08-2012.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Extensive Social Choice and the Measurement of Group Fitness in Biological Hierarchies

Author

Listed:
  • Walter Bossert
  • Chloe X. Qi
  • John A. Weymark

Abstract

Extensive social choice theory is used to study the problem of measuring group fitness in a two-level biological hierarchy. Both fixed and variable group size are considered. Axioms are identified that imply that the group measure satisfies a form of consequentialism in which group fitness only depends on the viabilities and fecundities of the individuals at the lower level in the hierarchy. This kind of consequentialism can take account of the group fitness advantages of germ-soma specialization, which is not possible with an alternative social choice framework proposed by Okasha, but which is an essential feature of the index of group fitness for a multicellular organism introduced by Michod, Viossat, Solari, Hurand, and Nedelcu to analyze the unicellular-multicellular evolutionary transition. The new framework is also used to analyze the fitness decoupling between levels that takes place during an evolutionary transition.

Suggested Citation

  • Walter Bossert & Chloe X. Qi & John A. Weymark, 2012. "Extensive Social Choice and the Measurement of Group Fitness in Biological Hierarchies," Cahiers de recherche 08-2012, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtl:montec:08-2012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cireqmontreal.com/wp-content/uploads/cahiers/08-2012-cah.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blackorby,Charles & Bossert,Walter & Donaldson,David J., 2005. "Population Issues in Social Choice Theory, Welfare Economics, and Ethics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521532587, October.
    2. Erwin Ooghe & Luc Lauwers, 2005. "Non-dictatorial extensive social choice," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 25(3), pages 721-743, April.
    3. Basu, K. & Pattanaik, P. K. & Suzumura, K. (ed.), 1995. "Choice, Welfare, and Development: A Festschrift for Amartya K. Sen," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198287896.
    4. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1984. "Social criteria for evaluating population change," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 13-33, November.
    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. Walter Bossert & Chloe X. Qi & John A. Weymark, 2012. "An Axiomatic Characterization of the MVSHN Group Fitness Ordering," Cahiers de recherche 16-2012, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.

    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. John A Weymark, 2012. "Social Welfare Functions," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers vuecon-sub-13-00018, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    2. BOSSERT, Walter & QI, Chloe X. & WEYMARK, John A., 2012. "An Axiomatic Characterization of the MVSHN Group Fitness Ordering," Cahiers de recherche 2012-13, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    3. Stelter, Robert, 2014. "Over-aging: Are present human populations too old?," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 137, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics.
    4. , B. & ,, 2014. "Escaping the repugnant conclusion: rank-discounted utilitarianism with variable population," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(3), September.
    5. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 2006-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
      • BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 14-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    6. Cockburn, John & Duclos, Jean-Yves & Zabsonré, Agnès, 2014. "Is global social welfare increasing? A critical-level enquiry," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 151-162.
    7. Cordoba, Juan Carlos & Liu, Xiying, 2018. "Efficiency with Endogenous Population and Fixed Resources," ISU General Staff Papers 201811010700001062, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    8. Pierre-André Jouvet & Gregory Ponthiere, 2011. "Survival, reproduction and congestion: the spaceship problem re-examined," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 233-273, October.
    9. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Discounting, risk and inequality: A general approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 34-49.
    10. Dean Spears & Stéphane Zuber, 2023. "Foundations of utilitarianism under risk and variable population," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 61(1), pages 101-129, July.
    11. Jean-Yves DUCLOS & Bouba HOUSSEINI, 2015. "Quality, Quantity and Duration of Lives," Working Papers P118, FERDI.
    12. Pierre-André Jouvet & Pierre Pestieau & Grégory Ponthière, 2008. "The Spaceship Problem Re-Examined," EconomiX Working Papers 2008-28, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    13. Dean Spears & Mark Budolfson, 2021. "Repugnant conclusions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(3), pages 567-588, October.
    14. BOSSERT, Walter & WEYMARK, J.A., 2006. "Social Choice: Recent Developments," Cahiers de recherche 2006-01, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    15. Hammond, Peter J., 2013. "Extending the Original Position: Revisiting the Pattanaik Critique of Vickrey/Harsanyi Utilitarianism," Economic Research Papers 270541, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    16. Aronsson, Thomas & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2011. "Animal Welfare and Social Decisions," Working Papers in Economics 485, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    17. Claudio Zoli, 2009. "Variable population welfare and poverty orderings satisfying replication properties," Working Papers 69/2009, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    18. Alain Trannoy & John Weymark, 2007. "Dominance Criteria for Critical-Level Generalized Utilitarianism," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0707, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    19. Hassoun, Nicole & S. Subramanian, 2010. "On Some Problems of Variable Population Poverty Comparisons," WIDER Working Paper Series 071, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Kohei Kamaga, 2016. "Infinite-horizon social evaluation with variable population size," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(1), pages 207-232, June.

    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:mtl:montec:08-2012. 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: Sharon BREWER (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdmtlca.html .

    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.