Reconciling interpersonal comparability and the intensity of preference for the utility sum rule

Ben Fine
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Ben Fine: Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh St, Russell Square, London, WC1H OXG, UK

Social Choice and Welfare, 1996, vol. 13, issue 3, 319-325

Abstract: It is shown that the utility sum rule as a method of social choice can be used to generate increasing decisiveness by restricting the range of individual utilities that may be assigned. This procedure is open to a dual interpretation, with restrictions varying either through the use of the degree of comparability (which reflects interpersonal trade-offs) or through the newly introduced degree of ordinality (which reflects the intensity of preference between alternatives). The two procedures can be traded off against each other with greater interpersonal weights to the worse-off corresponding to greater aversion to satisfying higher levels of preference in individual orderings. This is analogous to a similar exercise in the measurement of income inequality, where aversion to inequality is equivalent to interpersonal weights in favour of the poor (or against the wealthy).

Date: 1996
Note: Received: 21 February 1994/Accepted: 29 May 1995
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