Interpersonal comparisons of well-being

Charles Blackorby and Walter Bossert

No 269605, Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper, which is to be published as a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, provides an introduction to social-choice theory with interpersonal comparisons of well-being. We argue that the most promising route of escape from the negative conclusion of Arrow’s theorem is to use a richer informational environment than ordinal measurability and the absence of interpersonal comparability of well-being. We discuss welfarist social evaluation (which requires that the levels of individual well-being in two alternatives are the only determinants of their social ranking) and present characterizations of some important social-evaluation orderings.

Keywords: Health Economics and Policy; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18
Date: 2004-04-04
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being (2004)
Working Paper: Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uwarer:269605

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.269605

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