Evaluating intergenerational consequences by dominance: Efficiency when future identities are unobservable

Geir Asheim, Kohei Kamaga and Stéphane Zuber ()
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Geir Asheim: UiO - University of Oslo
Kohei Kamaga: Sophia University [Tokyo]
Stéphane Zuber: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris

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Abstract: We examine the claim that Pareto Dominance can evaluate efficiency-improving policies with long-lasting intergenerational consequences. Climate policies is a prime example, seeking to correct the externality that emitters of greenhouse gases do not pay for the future consequences of their emissions. However, climate policies lead to different identities of future people, ruling out a personal interpretation of Pareto Dominance. Assuming that there are infinitely many future people whose identities are not observable, we specify conditions under which their spatiotemporal positions do not matter and where rank-ordered streams play an important role. We justify Rank-Order Dominance whereby a world a rank-order dominates another world b if a Pareto dominates b for earlier born people and Suppes-Sen dominates b for future people, where one of the two need not be strict. We illustrate the controversial and even counterintuitive properties of this dominance relation for policy choice.

Date: 2026
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Published in Social Choice and Welfare, In press, ⟨10.1007/s00355-026-01674-6⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-05845687

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-026-01674-6

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