A Social Choice Trade-off Between Alternative Fairness Concepts: Solidarity versus Flexibility

Javier Perote and Juan Perote-Pena ()

No E2003/10, Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces from Centro de Estudios Andaluces

Abstract: In this paper, we define simple measures of two properties that social choice functions may embody in different degrees in public goods environments. First, a measure of solidarity is proposed such that Thomson's (1990) replacement monotonicity property is a particular case in which the full amount of solidarity is required. Secondly, we introduce a measure of the degree of flexibility of a social choice function and prove that a trade-off in Campbell and Kelly's (1993) sense exists between both properties. More solidarity can only be achieved in exchange of less flexibility of the decision rule. When we restrict ourselves to the family of voting schemes called generalized Condorcet winner solutions, introduced by Moulin (1980), we find the exact trade-off and we can easily find the degrees of fulfillment of both properties, which amount to some generalization of the idea of ''qualified majority''.

Keywords: Single-peaked preferences; solidarity; welfare domination under preference replacement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2003
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cea:doctra:e2003_10

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