Impartiality and relative utilitarianism

Edi Karni and John Weymark

Social Choice and Welfare, 2024, vol. 63, issue 1, No 1, 18 pages

Abstract: Abstract A novel axiomatization of relative utilitarianism is provided using the single-profile setting used in Harsanyi’s Social Aggregation Theorem. Harsanyi’s axioms are supplemented with an impartiality axiom that requires social alternative lotteries p and q to be socially indifferent when (i) two individuals have conflicting preferences for them and everybody else is indifferent and (ii) the concerned individuals’ strengths of preference for p over q have the same magnitude. This axiomatization shows that equality of the social weights can be obtained in a single-profile setting and that no interprofile condition is needed to obtain profile-independent weights in a multi-profile setting.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s00355-024-01518-1

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