Having enough and not having too much: A characterization of sufficientarianism–limitarianism
João V. Ferreira and
Foivos Savva
Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 250, issue C
Abstract:
Sufficientarianism, a prominent framework in distributive justice, asserts that everyone should have enough resources to meet a minimum threshold. Limitarianism, by contrast, holds that no individual should possess more than a specified upper limit of income or wealth. While the latter has gained attention in political philosophy and policy debates, it remains largely unexplored in formal normative economics. This paper bridges this gap by offering an axiomatic characterization of a social welfare criterion that integrates sufficientarian and limitarian principles. We formalize these dual commitments and investigate their implications for resource allocation. The analysis sheds light on the theoretical underpinnings of this hybrid approach and its potential relevance for normative analysis.
Keywords: Sufficientarianism; Limitarianism; Distributive justice; Social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176525001235
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:250:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525001235
DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112286
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 ().