TY - JOUR
T1 - Equally-distributed equivalent utility, ex post egalitarianism and utilitarianism
AU - Grant, Simon
AU - Kajii, Atsushi
AU - Polak, Ben
AU - Safra, Zvi
N1 - Funding Information:
✩ We thank John Broome, Jurgen Eichberger, Marc Fleurbaey, Thibault Gadjos, Edi Karni, Bart Lipman, Philippe Mongin, Stephen Morris, Heve Moulin, Klaus Nehring, David Pearce, John Quiggin, John Roemer and two referees for many helpful comments. We are especially grateful to John Weymark who diligently checked all the proofs and in a number of places provided invaluable assistance in tightening and improving our arguments. Atsushi Kajii thanks Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant 90152298) and the Inamori Foundation for support. Zvi Safra thanks the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1299/05) and the Henry Crown Institute of Business Research for support. * Corresponding author at: School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Grant).
PY - 2012/7
Y1 - 2012/7
N2 - We provide an axiomatization of expected equally-distributed equivalent-utility social welfare functions in the context of Harsanyi's impartial observer theorem. For this family of social welfare functions, we show what additional axiom is necessary and sufficient for the observer to exhibit aversion to ex post inequality. We also relate this axiomatization to our axiomatization in a companion paper of generalized utilitarian social welfare functions. Given certain richness assumptions, the only social welfare functions that belong to both families are the utilitarian.
AB - We provide an axiomatization of expected equally-distributed equivalent-utility social welfare functions in the context of Harsanyi's impartial observer theorem. For this family of social welfare functions, we show what additional axiom is necessary and sufficient for the observer to exhibit aversion to ex post inequality. We also relate this axiomatization to our axiomatization in a companion paper of generalized utilitarian social welfare functions. Given certain richness assumptions, the only social welfare functions that belong to both families are the utilitarian.
KW - Ex post egalitarianism
KW - Harsanyi's (impartial) observer
KW - Social welfare function
KW - Utilitarianism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84862325325&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jet.2011.04.001
DO - 10.1016/j.jet.2011.04.001
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AN - SCOPUS:84862325325
SN - 0022-0531
VL - 147
SP - 1545
EP - 1571
JO - Journal of Economic Theory
JF - Journal of Economic Theory
IS - 4
ER -