Observable interpersonal utility comparisons

Lasse Mononen ()
Additional contact information
Lasse Mononen: Bielefeld University

Social Choice and Welfare, 2025, vol. 65, issue 3, No 4, 629-644

Abstract: Abstract Harsanyi’s seminal aggregation theorem axiomatized weighted utilitarianism based on expected utility theory. However, the weights assigned to each individual cannot be separated from the individual’s utility. We show that once we depart from the expected utility framework, it is possible to uniquely identify the utilities and the weights. Specifically, we show that in the min-of-means social welfare function if each individual has a cardinal utility, unique up to a positive affine transformation, and any redistribution of utilities changes the social welfare for some initial allocation, then we can uniquely identify the utilities of the individuals and the weights of the social welfare function.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00355-025-01584-z Abstract (text/html)
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:sochwe:v:65:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s00355-025-01584-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... c+theory/journal/355

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-025-01584-z

Access Statistics for this article

Social Choice and Welfare is currently edited by Bhaskar Dutta, Marc Fleurbaey, Elizabeth Maggie Penn and Clemens Puppe

More articles in Social Choice and Welfare from Springer, The Society for Social Choice and Welfare Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().