Additively-separable and rank-discounted variable-population social welfare functions: A characterization

Dean Spears and H. Orri Stefánsson

Economics Letters, 2021, vol. 203, issue C

Abstract: Economic policy evaluations require social welfare functions for variable-size populations. Two important candidates are critical-level generalized utilitarianism (CLGU) and rank-discounted critical-level generalized utilitarianism, which was recently characterized by Asheim and Zuber (2014) (AZ). AZ introduce a novel axiom, existence of egalitarian equivalence (EEE). First, we show that, under some uncontroversial criteria for a plausible social welfare relation, EEE suffices to rule out the Repugnant Conclusion of population ethics (without AZ’s other novel axioms). Second, we provide a new characterization of CLGU: AZ’s set of axioms is equivalent to CLGU when EEE is replaced by the axiom same-number independence.

Keywords: Social welfare; Population ethics; Utilitarianism; Rank-discounted utilitarianism; Critical-level utilitarianism; Separability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:203:y:2021:i:c:s0165176521001476

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109870

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