A new result on the impossibility of avoiding both the repugnant and sadistic conclusions

Susumu Cato and Ko Harada

Economics Letters, 2023, vol. 232, issue C

Abstract: This paper establishes a new impossibility result for welfaristic evaluations when the population varies. We consider a weak version of the repugnant conclusion instead of the commonly used version. It is shown that if a population principle satisfying two reasonable properties avoids the sadistic conclusion, then the weak repugnant conclusion must hold. We use a general variable-population setting where the identities of individuals can matter.

Keywords: Variable population; Repugnant conclusion; Sadistic conclusion; Utilitarianism; Identity problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176523003312
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecolet:v:232:y:2023:i:c:s0165176523003312

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111306

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().