Inequality aversion and risk aversion

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chambers, Christopher P.
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California San Diego
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2010.10.016
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 1642-1651
• 关键词: Risk aversion; inequality aversion; aggregation

摘要

This note shows that for two social welfare functions which are inequality averse with respect to certainty equivalents, if one is more inequality averse for certainty equivalents than the other, the household preference induced by optimally allocating aggregate bundles according to this social welfare function is more risk averse than the other. We present examples showing that this comparative static can be reversed if absolute inequality aversion is dropped. We show that the utilitarian rule always induces the least risk averse household preference among all social welfare functions (this corresponds to the sum of certainty equivalents). (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.