IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/van/wpaper/vuecon-sub-13-00010.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Conundrums for Nonconsequentialists

Author

Listed:
  • John A Weymark

    (Vanderbilt University)

Abstract

There are a number of single-profile impossibility theorems in social choice theory and welfare economics that demonstrate the incompatibility of dominance criteria with various nonconsequentialist principles given some rationality restrictions on the rankings being considered. This article is concerned with examining what they have in common and how they differ. Groups of results are identified that have similar formal structures and are established using similar proof strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • John A Weymark, 2013. "Conundrums for Nonconsequentialists," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 13-00010, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:van:wpaper:vuecon-sub-13-00010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/VUECON/VUECON-13-00010.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles Blackorby & Walter Bossert & David Donaldson, 2005. "Multi-profile welfarism: A generalization," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 24(2), pages 253-267, April.
    2. Marc Fleurbaey, 2003. "Social Welfare, Priority to the Worst-Off And the Dimensions of Individual Well-Being," IDEP Working Papers 0312, Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France.
    3. Marc Fleurbaey, 2011. "Willingness-to-pay and the equivalence approach," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 121(1), pages 35-58.
    4. Blackorby, C. & Donaldson, D. & Weymark, J.A., 1990. "A Welfarist Proof Of Arrow'S Theorem," G.R.E.Q.A.M. 90a12, Universite Aix-Marseille III.
    5. Fleurbaey,Marc & Maniquet,François, 2011. "A Theory of Fairness and Social Welfare," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521887427, September.
    6. Sen, Amartya K, 1979. "Personal Utilities and Public Judgements: Or What's Wrong with Welfare Economics?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 89(355), pages 537-558, September.
    7. Marc Fleurbaey & Erik Schokkaert & Koen Decancq, 2008. "What Good is Happiness?," OPHI Working Papers 20, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    8. Prasanta K. Pattanaik & Yongsheng Xu, 2007. "Minimal relativism, dominance, and standard of living comparisons based on functionings," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(2), pages 354-374, April.
    9. Sen, Amartya K, 1977. "On Weights and Measures: Informational Constraints in Social Welfare Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(7), pages 1539-1572, October.
    10. Amartya SEN, 1990. "Welfare, Freedom and Social Choice: a Reply," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 1990040, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    11. Koen Decancq & Marc Fleurbaey & Erik Schokkaert, 2015. "Happiness, Equivalent Incomes and Respect for Individual Preferences," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82, pages 1082-1106, December.
    12. Campbell, Donald E. & Kelly, Jerry S., 2002. "Impossibility theorems in the arrovian framework," 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 1, chapter 1, pages 35-94, Elsevier.
    13. K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), 2011. "Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    14. Marc Fleurbaey, 2007. "Social choice and the indexing dilemma," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 29(4), pages 633-648, December.
    15. Bernt Christian Brun & Bertil Tungodden, 2004. "Non-welfaristic theories of justice: Is “the intersection approach” a solution to the indexing impasse?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 22(1), pages 49-60, February.
    16. Sen, Amartya Kumar, 1970. "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal," Scholarly Articles 3612779, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    17. Sen, Amartya, 1970. "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(1), pages 152-157, Jan.-Feb..
    18. Marc Fleurbaey & Bertil Tungodden & Howard F. Chang, 2003. "Any Non-welfarist Method of Policy Assessment Violates the Pareto Principle: A Comment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(6), pages 1382-1386, December.
    19. Donaldson, David & Weymark, John A., 1998. "A Quasiordering Is the Intersection of Orderings," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 382-387, February.
    20. Pattanaik, Prasanta K. & Xu, Yongsheng, 2012. "On Dominance And Context-Dependence In Decisions Involving Multiple Attributes," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 117-132, July.
    21. Marc Fleurbaey & Erik Schokkaert, 2013. "Behavioral Welfare Economics and Redistribution," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 180-205, August.
    22. Marc Fleurbaey & Alain Trannoy, 2003. "The impossibility of a Paretian egalitarian," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 21(2), pages 243-263, October.
    23. Suzumura, Kotaro, 2001. "Pareto principles from Inch to Ell," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 95-98, January.
    24. Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell, 2001. "Any Non-welfarist Method of Policy Assessment Violates the Pareto Principle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 281-286, April.
    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. Kristof Bosmans & Z. Emel Öztürk, 2022. "Laissez-faire versus Pareto," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 58(4), pages 741-751, May.
    2. Sakamoto, Norihito, 2018. "Equity Criteria Based on the Dominance Principle and Individual Preferences: Refinements of the Consensus Approach," RCNE Discussion Paper Series 5, Research Center for Normative Economics, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    3. Bosmans, Kristof & Decancq, Koen & Ooghe, Erwin, 2018. "Who's afraid of aggregating money metrics?," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), May.
    4. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).

    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. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    2. Nikolai Hoberg & Stefan Baumgärtner, 2014. "Value pluralism, trade-offs and efficiencies," Working Paper Series in Economics 311, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    3. Mariotti, Marco & Veneziani, Roberto, 2013. "On the impossibility of complete Non-Interference in Paretian social judgements," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(4), pages 1689-1699.
    4. Decancq, Koen & Nys, Annemie, 2021. "Non-parametric well-being comparisons," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    5. Bertil Tungodden, 2004. "Some Reflections on the Role of Moral Reasoning in Economics," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 30, pages 49-59.
    6. Susumu Cato & Adrien Lutz, 2018. "Kenneth Arrow, moral obligations, and public policies," Working Papers halshs-01973898, HAL.
    7. Olivier Bargain & André Decoster & Mathias Dolls & Dirk Neumann & Andreas Peichl & Sebastian Siegloch, 2013. "Welfare, labor supply and heterogeneous preferences: evidence for Europe and the US," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(4), pages 789-817, October.
    8. John A Weymark, 2012. "Social Welfare Functions," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers vuecon-sub-13-00018, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    9. Susumu Cato, 2014. "Common preference, non-consequential features, and collective decision making," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 18(4), pages 265-287, December.
    10. Mongin, Philippe, 2019. "Interview of Peter J. Hammond," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 50, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    11. Woo, Wai Chiu, 2018. "Kaplow–Shavell welfarism without continuity," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 92-96.
    12. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2002. "In Defense of Welfarism," Cahiers de recherche 2002-02, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    13. Rafael Treibich, 2019. "Welfare egalitarianism with other-regarding preferences," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(1), pages 1-28, January.
    14. Kristof Bosmans & Z. Emel Öztürk, 2022. "Laissez-faire versus Pareto," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 58(4), pages 741-751, May.
    15. Reiko Gotoh & Naoki Yoshihara, 2018. "Securing basic well-being for all," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(4), pages 422-452, October.
    16. Wesley H. Holliday & Eric Pacuit, 2020. "Arrow’s decisive coalitions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 463-505, March.
    17. Koen Decancq & Marc Fleurbaey & François Maniquet, 2019. "Multidimensional poverty measurement with individual preferences," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(1), pages 29-49, March.
    18. Itai Sher, 2021. "Generalized Social Marginal Welfare Weights Imply Inconsistent Comparisons of Tax Policies," Working Papers 2021-009, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    19. Koen Decancq & Marc Fleurbaey & Erik Schokkaert, 2017. "Wellbeing Inequality and Preference Heterogeneity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(334), pages 210-238, April.
    20. Marc Fleurbaey & Erik Schokkaert, 2013. "Behavioral Welfare Economics and Redistribution," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 180-205, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    consequentialism; welfarism; social choice; welfare economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making

    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:van:wpaper:vuecon-sub-13-00010. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/econ/wparchive/index.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.