Abstract
Tsui and Weymark (Econ Theory 10:241–256, 1997, https://doi.org/10.1007/s001990050156) have shown that the only continuous social welfare orderings on the whole Euclidean space which satisfy the weak Pareto principle and are invariant to individual-specific similarity transformations of utilities are strongly dictatorial. Their proof relies on functional equation arguments which are quite complex. This note provides a simpler proof of their theorem.
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Zachary Goodsell and John Weymark for suggestions which greatly improved the readability of the proof. This publication was supported by the Princeton University Library Open Access Fund.
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Nebel, J.M. Strong dictatorship via ratio-scale measurable utilities: a simpler proof. Econ Theory Bull 11, 101–106 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40505-023-00244-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40505-023-00244-8
Keywords
- Arrow’s impossibility theorem
- Strong dictatorship
- social welfare orderings
- Ratio-scale measurability
- Informational invariance conditions