Abstract
An argument for “welfarist” social evaluation is presented that replaces the independence axiom with a consistency axiom for social-evaluation functionals in economic environments. This axiom (consistency across dimension or COAD) requires that, if two allocations contain suballocations in common, and if individual utility functions are projected down to the smaller economy where allocations change, then these small allocations must be ranked in the same way that their ancestral allocations were.
The basic result is applied to different information environments and a variety of ethical axioms appropriate to economic environments is investigated.
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We are indebted to Charles Blackorby, Erwin Diewert, Ed Morey, Bill Schworm and John Weymark for helpful discussions, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Killiam Foundation and the National Science Foundation, for research support.
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Donaldson, D., Roemer, J.E. Social choice in economic environments with dimensional variation. Soc Choice Welfare 4, 253–276 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00286867
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00286867