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Utilitarianism or welfarism: does it make a difference?

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Abstract

We show that it is possible to reconcile the utilitarian and welfarist principles under the requirement of unanimity provided that the set of profiles over which the consensus is attained is rich enough. More precisely, we identify a closedness condition which, if satisfied by a class of n-tuples of utility functions, guarantees that the rankings of social states induced by utilitarian and welfarist unanimities over that class are identical. We illustrate the importance of the result for the measurement of unidimensional as well as multidimensional inequalities from a dominance point of view.

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Article 22 July 2014

Jeffrey Sanford Russell, John Hawthorne & Lara Buchak

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aix-Marseille University and AMSE (GREQAM), Centre de la Vieille Charité, 13002, Marseille, France

    Nicolas Gravel

  2. GREThA (UMR CNRS 5113), Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, Avenue Léon Duguit, 33608, Pessac, France

    Patrick Moyes

  3. IDEP, Centre de la Vieille Charité, 13002, Marseille, France

    Patrick Moyes

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  1. Nicolas Gravel
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  2. Patrick Moyes
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Correspondence to Patrick Moyes.

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Gravel, N., Moyes, P. Utilitarianism or welfarism: does it make a difference?. Soc Choice Welf 40, 529–551 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-011-0617-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-011-0617-3

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