Equality of Resources Revisited Using Induced Preferences

Chistian Arnsperger
Additional contact information
Chistian Arnsperger: UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES); Université catholique de Louvain, Chaire Hoover

No 1995012, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: This essay explores the link between Ronald Dworkin’s well-known concept of ‘equality of resources’ and the notion of an envy-free allocation in the context of an economy with production. In particular, I investigate a two-stage economy in which the first stage corresponds to Dworkin’s ‘competitive initial auction’, while the second stage corresponds to the operation of the actual (possibly noncompetitive) economy. The central claim of the essay is that there is a problem in interpreting equality of resources on the basis of existing results in the envy-freeness literature, especially results concerning the ‘competitive equilibrium from equal split’ (CEES). The problem comes from the fact that these results use the agents’ ‘direct’ preferences, whereas I argue that Dworkin’s concept can make sense only if one introduces a notion of ‘induced preferences for resources’. I study two criteria of envy-freeness based on induced preferences, and show that the difficulties arising in the implementation of these two criteria in CEES sheds considerable doubt on (i) the practicability of Dworkin’s own project and (ii) the validity of usual interpretation of equality of resources by economists.

Pages: 17
Date: 1995-04-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:1995012

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) Place Montesquieu 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Virginie LEBLANC ().