UTILITARIANISM: OVERCOMING THE DIFFICULTY OF INTERPERSONAL COMPARISON

Yew-Kwang Ng ()

The Singapore Economic Review (SER), 2024, vol. 69, issue 04, 1525-1536

Abstract: Argenziano and Gilboa (2019) obtain a very important result “that consumer choice data alone are sufficient … [to] provide a microfoundation for a weighted utilitarian social welfare function that reflects common moral intuitions about interpersonal comparisons of utilities†. This paper compares this result with my 1975 Review of Economic Studies paper and examines the sense in which consumer data alone are sufficient. A way to dispense with interpersonal comparisons of utility in specific issues by following efficiency supremacy is also discussed. The suspicion of interpersonal comparison and utilitarianism may be based on misunderstandings.

Keywords: Utilitarianism; interpersonal comparison of utility; social welfare functions; efficiency; economic policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1142/S0217590824450012

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