Reconciling the Rawlsian and the utilitarian approaches to the maximization of social welfare

Oded Stark, Marcin Jakubek and Fryderyk Falniowski

No 65, University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics from University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics

Abstract: Under a deadweight loss of tax and transfer, there is tension between the optimal policy choices of a Rawlsian social planner and a utilitarian social planner. However, when with a weight greater than a certain critical value the individuals' utility functions incorporate distaste for low relative income, a utilitarian will select exactly the same income distribution as a Rawlsian.

Keywords: Maximization of social welfare; Rawlsian social welfare function; Utilitarian social welfare function; Deadweight loss; Distaste for low relative income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D60 H21 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/88609/1/774698489.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Reconciling the Rawlsian and the utilitarian approaches to the maximization of social welfare (2014)
Working Paper: Reconciling the Rawlsian and the utilitarian approaches to the maximization of social welfare (2014)
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:zbw:tuewef:65

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics from University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().