Multidimensional welfare aggregation

List, Christian ORCID: 0000-0003-1627-800X (2004) Multidimensional welfare aggregation. Public Choice, 119 (1-2). pp. 119-142. ISSN 1573-7101

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Abstract

Most accounts of welfare aggregation in the tradition of Arrow's (1951/1963) and Sen's (1970/1979) social-choice-theoretic frameworks represent the welfare of an individual in terms of a single welfare ordering or a single scalar-valued welfare function. I develop a multidimensional generalization of Arrow's and Sen's frameworks, representing individual welfare in terms of multiple personal welfare functions, corresponding to multiple 'dimensions' of welfare. I show that, as in the one-dimensional case, the existence of attractive aggregation procedures depends on certain informational assumptions, specifically about the measurability of welfare and its comparability not only across individuals but also across dimensions. I state several impossibility and possibility results. Under Arrow-type conditions, insufficient comparability across individuals leads to dictatorship of a single individual, while insufficient comparability across dimensions leads to dominance of a single dimension. Given sufficient comparability both across individuals and across dimensions, a range of possibilities emerges. I discuss the substantive implications of the results.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://springerlink.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genr...
Additional Information:	Published 2004 © Springer. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com. LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (<http://eprints.lse.ac.uk>) of the LSE Research Online website.
Divisions:	Government Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method CPNSS
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Date Deposited:	31 Mar 2006
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2024 23:45
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/699

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