A choice-functional characterization of welfarism
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Nebel, Jacob M.
署名单位：
Princeton University
刊物名称：
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
ISSN/ISSBN：
0022-0531
DOI：
10.1016/j.jet.2024.105918
发表日期：
2024
关键词：
摘要：
Welfarism is the view that individual welfare is the only thing that matters. One important contribution of social choice theory has been to provide a precise formulation and axiomatic characterization of welfarism using Amartya Sen's framework of social welfare functionals. This paper is motivated by the observation that the standard formalization of welfarism is too restrictive, since a welfarist social planner need not be committed to maximizing a preference ordering or any other binary relation over alternatives. We therefore provide a characterization of welfarism in a more general choice-functional setting and show that welfarism, so understood, carries no commitment to rationalizability. This characterization is compatible with welfare values having any structure whatsoever. It also sheds light on different formulations of anonymity, revealing only some of these to be fundamental requirements of impartiality.