IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/sochwe/v1y1984i3p165-175.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On interpersonal utility comparisons

Author

Listed:
  • M. Kaneko

Abstract

This paper argues that interpersonal comparisons of utility levels are difficult in principle and that interpersonal comparisons of utility differences can also hardly be defined based solely on individual choice behavior. Copyright Springer-Verlag 1984

Suggested Citation

  • M. Kaneko, 1984. "On interpersonal utility comparisons," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 1(3), pages 165-175, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:1:y:1984:i:3:p:165-175
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00433514
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00433514
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00433514?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin W. S. Roberts, 1980. "Interpersonal Comparability and Social Choice Theory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(2), pages 421-439.
    2. Hammond, Peter J, 1976. "Equity, Arrow's Conditions, and Rawls' Difference Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(4), pages 793-804, July.
    3. Hammond, Peter J, 1979. "Equity in Two Person Situations: Some Consequences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1127-1135, September.
    4. Claude D'Aspremont & Louis Gevers, 1977. "Equity and the Informational Basis of Collective Choice," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(2), pages 199-209.
    5. Patrick Suppes & Muriel Winet, 1955. "An Axiomatization of Utility Based on the Notion of Utility Differences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(3-4), pages 259-270, 04-07.
    6. Kaneko, Mamoru, 1987. "The conventionally stable sets in noncooperative games with limited observations I: Definitions and introductory arguments," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 93-128, April.
    7. 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.
    8. Julian L. Simon, 1974. "Interpersonal Welfare Comparisons Can Be Made ‐ And Used For Redistribution Decisions ," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 63-98, January.
    9. Hammond, Peter J., 1977. "Dual interpersonal comparisons of utility and the welfare economics of income distribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 51-71, February.
    10. Kaneko, Mamoru & Nakamura, Kenjiro, 1979. "The Nash Social Welfare Function," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 423-435, March.
    11. Sen, Amartya K, 1977. "On Weights and Measures: Informational Constraints in Social Welfare Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(7), pages 1539-1572, October.
    12. Kevin W. S. Roberts, 1980. "Possibility Theorems with Interpersonally Comparable Welfare Levels," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(2), pages 409-420.
    13. Eric Maskin, 1978. "A Theorem on Utilitarianism," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 45(1), pages 93-96.
    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. d'Aspremont, Claude & Gevers, Louis, 2002. "Social welfare functionals and interpersonal comparability," 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 10, pages 459-541, Elsevier.
    2. Mongin, Philippe, 2001. "The impartial observer theorem of social ethics," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(2), pages 147-179, October.
    3. Miyake, Mitsunobu, 2016. "Logarithmically homogeneous preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1-9.
    4. Basu, Kaushik & Mitra, Tapan, 2007. "Utilitarianism for infinite utility streams: A new welfare criterion and its axiomatic characterization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 350-373, March.
    5. Michail Anthropelos & Nikolaos E. Frangos & Stylianos Z. Xanthopoulos & Athanasios N. Yannacopoulos, 2008. "On contingent claims pricing in incomplete markets: A risk sharing approach," Papers 0809.4781, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2012.
    6. Eraslan, H.Hulya & McLennan, Andrew, 2004. "Strategic candidacy for multivalued voting procedures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 29-54, July.
    7. Shinji Yamashige, 1995. "Subjectively Envy-Free Allocation: Characterization and Existence," Working Papers yamashig-95-02, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    8. Alcalde-Unzu, Jorge & Ballester, Miguel A., 2005. "Some remarks on ranking opportunity sets and Arrow impossibility theorems: correspondence results," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 116-123, September.

    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. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter, 2004. "Interpersonal comparisons of well-being," Economic Research Papers 269605, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    2. d'Aspremont, Claude & Gevers, Louis, 2002. "Social welfare functionals and interpersonal comparability," 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 10, pages 459-541, Elsevier.
    3. Kotaro Suzumura, 2002. "Introduction to social choice and welfare," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 442, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    4. Hirofumi Yamamura, 2017. "Interpersonal comparison necessary for Arrovian aggregation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(1), pages 37-64, June.
    5. Kaminski, Marek M., 2004. "Social choice and information: the informational structure of uniqueness theorems in axiomatic social theories," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 121-138, September.
    6. 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.
    7. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 1996. "Leximin population ethics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 115-131, April.
    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. Walter Bossert & Kotaro Suzumura, 2020. "Positionalist voting rules: a general definition and axiomatic characterizations," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(1), pages 85-116, June.
    10. Georgios Gerasimou, 2019. "Simple Preference Intensity Comparisons," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201905, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews, revised 27 Apr 2020.
    11. Sakamoto, Norihito, 2020. "Equity Principles and Interpersonal Comparison of Well-being: Old and New Joint Characterizations of Generalized Leximin, Rank-dependent Utilitarian, and Leximin Rules," RCNE Discussion Paper Series 7, Research Center for Normative Economics, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    12. Bossert, Walter, 1998. "Welfarism and rationalizability in allocation problems with indivisibilities1," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 133-150, March.
    13. Partha Dasgupta, 2011. "The Ethics of Intergenerational Distribution: Reply and Response to John E. Roemer," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 50(4), pages 475-493, December.
    14. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 1997. "Birth-Date Dependent Population Ethics: Critical-Level Principles," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 260-284, December.
    15. Anirudha Balasubramanian, 2015. "On weighted utilitarianism and an application," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(4), pages 745-763, April.
    16. 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.
    17. Nicolas Gravel & Brice Magdalou & Patrick Moyes, 2017. "Hammond’s Equity Principle and the Measurement of Ordinal Inequalities," AMSE Working Papers 1703, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    18. Mongin, Philippe, 2019. "Interview of Peter J. Hammond," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 50, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    19. Jon X. Eguia & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2019. "Social welfare with net utilities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 41-49, April.
    20. Basu, Kaushik & Mitra, Tapan, 2007. "Utilitarianism for infinite utility streams: A new welfare criterion and its axiomatic characterization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 350-373, March.

    More about this item

    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:spr:sochwe:v:1:y:1984:i:3:p:165-175. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.