Uncertainty and critical-level population principles

Walter Bossert, David Donaldson and Charles Blackorby

Journal of Population Economics, 1998, vol. 11, issue 1, 20 pages

Abstract: This paper analyzes variable-population social-evaluation principles in a framework where outcomes are uncertain. We provide characterizations of expected-utility versions of critical-level generalized utilitarian rules. These principles evaluate lotteries over possible states of the world on the basis of the sum of the expected values of differences between transformed utility levels and a transformed critical level, conditional on the agents` being alive in the states under consideration. Equivalently, the critical-level utilitarian value functions applied to weighted individual expected utilities can be employed. Weights are determined by the anonymity axiom.

Keywords: Population; ethics; ·; uncertainty; ·; critical; levels (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D71 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-02-27
Note: Received: 21 November 1996 / Accepted: 11 March 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00148/papers/8011001/80110001.pdf (application/pdf)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/0014 ... 11001/80110001.ps.gz (application/postscript)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

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:spr:jopoec:v:11:y:1998:i:1:p:1-20

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().