The Possibility of Ordering Infinite Utility Streams

Walter Bossert, Yves Sprumont () and Kotaro Suzumura

Cahiers de recherche from Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ

Abstract: This paper revisits Diamond’s classical impossibility result regarding the ordering of infinite utility streams. We show that if no representability condition is imposed, there do exist strongly Paretian and finitely anonymous orderings of intertemporal utility streams with attractive additional properties. We extend a possibility theorem due to Svensson to a characterization theorem and we provide characterizations of all strongly Paretian and finitely anonymous rankings satisfying the strict transfer principle. In addition, infinitehorizon extensions of leximin and of utilitarianism are characterized by adding an equitypreference axiom and finite translation-scale measurability, respectively, to strong Pareto and finite anonymity.

Keywords: intergenerational justice; multi-period social choice; leximin; utilitarianism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: The Possibility of Ordering Infinite Utility Streams (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mtl:montec:12-2004

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