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Intergenerational equity and an explicit construction of welfare criteria

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Abstract

Ranking infinite utility streams includes many impossibility results, most involving certain Pareto, anonymity, or continuity requirements. We introduce the concept of the future agreement extension, a method that explicitly extends orderings on finite time horizons to an infinite time horizon. The future agreement extension of the given orderings is quasi-transitive, complete, and pairwisely continuous. Furthermore, its asymmetric part is larger than that of any other pairwisely continuous extension of the orderings. In case of anonymous and strongly Paretian orderings, their future agreement extension is variable step anonymous and strongly Paretian. Characterizations of the future agreement extensions of the utilitarian and leximin orderings are obtained as applications.

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  1. Department of Economics, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, 240-8501, Japan

    Toyotaka Sakai

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  1. Toyotaka Sakai
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Correspondence to Toyotaka Sakai.

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Sakai, T. Intergenerational equity and an explicit construction of welfare criteria. Soc Choice Welf 35, 393–414 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-010-0446-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-010-0446-9

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