Arbeitspapier
Utilitarianism Is Implied by Social and Individual Dominance
The expectation of a sum of utilities is a core criterion for evaluating policies and social welfare under variable population and social risk. Our contribution is to show that a previously unrecognized combination of weak assumptions yields general versions of this criterion, both in fixed-population and in variable-population settings. We show that two dimensions of weak dominance (over risk and individuals) characterize a social welfare function with two dimensions of additive separability. So social expected utility emerges merely from social statewise dominance (given other axioms). Moreover, additive utilitarianism, in the variable- population setting, arises from a new, weak form of individual stochastic dominance with two attractive properties: It only applies to lives certain to exist (so it does not compare life against non-existence), and it avoids prominent egalitarian objections to utilitarianism by only applying if certain correlations are preserved. Our result provides a foundation for evaluating climate change, growth, and depopulation.
- Sprache
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Englisch
- Erschienen in
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Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 16561
- Klassifikation
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Wirtschaft
Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
- Thema
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social risk
variable population
utilitarianism
- Ereignis
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (wer)
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Gustafsson, Johan E.
Spears, Dean
Zuber, Stéphane
- Ereignis
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Veröffentlichung
- (wer)
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Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
- (wo)
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Bonn
- (wann)
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2023
- Handle
- Letzte Aktualisierung
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10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ
Datenpartner
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Objekttyp
- Arbeitspapier
Beteiligte
- Gustafsson, Johan E.
- Spears, Dean
- Zuber, Stéphane
- Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Entstanden
- 2023