Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle

Michele Lombardi and Roberto Veneziani

Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: This paper analyses Rawls's celebrated difference principle, and its lexicographic extension, in societies with a finite and an infinite number of agents. A unified framework of analysis is set up, which allows one to characterise Rawlsian egalitarian principles by means of a weaker version of a new axiom - the Harm Principle - recently proposed by [13]. This is quite surprising, because the Harm principle is meant to capture a liberal requirement of noninterference and it incorporates no obvious egalitarian content. A set of new characterisations of the maximin and of its lexicographic refinement are derived, including in the intergenerational context with an infinite number of agents.

Keywords: Difference principle; leximin; weak harm priciple; infinite utility streams (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D70 Q01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://gcoe.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/research/discussion/2008/pdf/gd09-078.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle (2016)
Working Paper: Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle (2013)
Working Paper: Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle (2013)
Working Paper: Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle (2009)
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:hst:ghsdps:gd09-078

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tatsuji Makino ().