Incomplete altruistic preferences

Vittorioemanuele Ferrante ()

Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa

Abstract: This note is concerned with qualitative restrictions on individual binary preferences of decision makers over profiles of individual actions to account for intersubjective sensitivity to welfare, or preferences, of others, when numerical representations by utility functions fail, due to incompleteness of the binary relations. The restrictions are to accommodate notions of altruism, egoism, paternalism, and others, as externalities of private actions of others through others’ welfare, or preferences, as in the literature. A conclusion is suggested to the exent that a notion of utility which is independent of numerical representations of preferences may be necessary to deal with attitudes of concern towards the preferences of others.

Keywords: incomplete preferences; utility; altruism; egoism; paternalism; externalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D62 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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