Statistical utilitarianism

Marcus Pivato

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We show that, in a sufficiently large population satisfying certain statistical regularities, it is often possible to accurately estimate the utilitarian social welfare function, even if we only have very noisy data about individual utility functions and interpersonal utility comparisons. In particular, we show that it is often possible to identify an optimal or close-to-optimal utilitarian social choice using voting rules such as the Borda rule, approval voting, relative utilitarianism, or any Condorcet-consistent rule.

Keywords: utilitarian; relative utilitarian; approval voting; Borda; scoring rule; Condorcet. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-09-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mic and nep-upt
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Related works:
Working Paper: Statistical utilitarianism (2016)
Working Paper: Statistical utilitarianism (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:49561

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