Treading a fine line: characterisations and impossibilities for liberal principles in infinitely-lived societies. (English) Zbl 1277.91048

Lombardi, Michele; Veneziani, Roberto

B. E. J. Theor. Econ. 12, No. 1, Article No. 24, 14 p. (2012).

Summary: This paper extends the analysis of liberal principles in social choice recently proposed by M. Mariotti and the second author [Soc. Choice Welfare 32, No. 1, 123–128 (2009; Zbl 1184.91087)] to infinitely-lived societies. First, some novel characterisations of inegalitarian leximax social welfare relations are derived based on the individual benefit principle (IBP), which incorporates a liberal, non-interfering view of society. This is surprising because the IBP does not explicitly incorporate any preference for inequality, nor does it assign priority to well-off members of society. Second, some impossibility results are derived that highlight a general tension between standard fairness and efficiency axioms in social choice, and a liberal principle of non-interference that generalises IBP.

MSC:

91B14

Social choice

Keywords:

infinite utility streams; individual benefit principle; leximax; non-interference; impossibility