Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Multi-profile intergenerational social choice

  • Published:
Social Choice and Welfare Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In an infinite-horizon setting, Ferejohn and Page showed that any social welfare function satisfying Arrow’s axioms and stationarity must be a dictatorship of the first generation. Packel strengthened this result by proving that no collective choice rule generating complete social preferences can satisfy unlimited domain, weak Pareto and stationarity. We prove that this impossibility survives under a domain restriction and without completeness. We propose an alternative stationarity axiom and show that a social welfare function on a specific domain satisfies this modified version and some standard social choice axioms if and only if it is a chronological dictatorship.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Arrow KJ (1951) Social choice and individual values. Wiley, New York (2nd edn, 1963)

  • Asheim GB, Mitra T, Tungodden B (2007) A new equity condition for infinite utility streams and the possibility of being Paretian. In: Roemer J, Suzumura K (eds) Intergenerational equity and sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp 55–68

    Google Scholar 

  • Basu K, Mitra T (2003) Aggregating infinite utility streams with intergenerational equity: the impossibility of being Paretian. Econometrica 71: 1557–1563

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Basu K, Mitra T (2007) Utilitarianism for infinite utility streams: a new welfare criterion and its axiomatic characterization. J Econ Theory 133: 350–373

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bossert W, Sprumont Y, Suzumura K (2007) Ordering infinite utility streams. J Econ Theory 135: 579–589

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell DE (1990) Intergenerational social choice without the Pareto principle. J Econ Theory 50: 414–423

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell DE (1992a) Quasitransitive intergenerational social choice for economic environments. J Math Econ 21: 229–247

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell DE (1992b) Equity, efficiency, and social choice. Clarendon, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Diamond P (1965) The evaluation of infinite utility streams. Econometrica 33: 170–177

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferejohn J, Page T (1978) On the foundations of intertemporal choice. Am J Agric Econ 60: 269–275

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fishburn PC (1970) Arrow’s impossibility theorem: concise proof and infinite voters. J Econ Theory 2: 103–106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansson B (1976) The existence of group preference functions. Public Choice 38: 89–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hara C, Shinotsuka T, Suzumura K, Xu Y (2008) Continuity and egalitarianism in the evaluation of infinite utility streams. Soc Choice Welf 31: 179–191

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirman AP, Sondermann D (1972) Arrow’s theorem, many agents, and invisible dictators. J Econ Theory 5: 267–277

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koopmans TC (1960) Stationary ordinal utility and impatience. Econometrica 28: 287–309

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Packel E (1980) Impossibility results in the axiomatic theory of intertemporal choice. Public Choice 35: 219–227

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sen AK (1979) Personal utilities and public judgements: or what’s wrong with welfare economics?. Econ J 89: 537–558

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sen AK (1995) Rationality and social choice. Am Econ Rev 85:1–24. Reprinted in A. K. Sen (2002) Rationality and freedom. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 261–299

    Google Scholar 

  • Sidgwick H (1907) The methods of ethics, 7th edn. Macmillan and Co., London

    Google Scholar 

  • Suzumura K (2000) Welfare economics beyond welfarist-consequentialism. Jpn Econ Rev 51: 1–32

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Svensson L-G (1980) Equity among generations. Econometrica 48: 1251–1256

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, CIREQ, University of Montreal, Station Downtown, P.O. Box 6128, Montreal, QC, H3C 3J7, Canada

    Walter Bossert

  2. School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, 1-6-1 Nishi-Waseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-8050, Japan

    Kotaro Suzumura

Authors
  1. Walter Bossert
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kotaro Suzumura
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Walter Bossert.

Additional information

The paper was presented at the University of British Columbia, the University of California at Riverside, the International Symposium on Choice, Rationality and Intergenerational Equity in Tokyo, CORE, the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, the Workshop on Social Choice and Poverty in Siena, the Toulouse Conference on Environmental and Resource Economics and the CEPET Workshop in Honor of Nick Baigent in Udine.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bossert, W., Suzumura, K. Multi-profile intergenerational social choice. Soc Choice Welf 37, 493–509 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-010-0501-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-010-0501-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation