Utilitarianism or Welfarism: Does it Make a Difference?

Nicolas Gravel (1) , Patrick Moyes (2)

1 GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille
2 GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée

We show that it is possible to reconcile the utilitarian and welfarist principles under the requirement of unanimity provided that the set of profiles over which the consensus is attained is rich enough. More precisely, we identify a closedness condition which, if satisfied by a class of n-tuples of utility functions, guarantees that the rankings of social states induced by utilitarian and welfarist unanimities over that class are identical. We illustrate the importance of the result for the measurement of unidimensional as well as multidimensional inequalities from a dominance point of view.

Mots clés: Unanimity; Utilitarianism; Welfarism; Stochastic Dominance; Inequality

Domaines: Economies et finances

Nicolas Gravel, Patrick Moyes. Utilitarianism or Welfarism: Does it Make a Difference?. 2011. ⟨halshs-00634010⟩