Anonymous Single-profile Welfarism (original) (raw)

Abstract

This note reexamines the single-profile approach to social-choice theory. If an alternative is interpreted as a social state of affairs or a history of the world, it can be argued that a multi-profile approach is inappropriate because the information profile is determined by the set of alternatives. However, single-profile approaches are criticized because of the limitations they impose on the possibility of formulating properties such as anonymity. We suggest an alternative definition of anonymity that applies in a single-profile setting and characterize anonymous single-profile welfarism under a richness assumption.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Economics, University of Warwick and GREQAM, Coventry, UK
   Charles Blackorby
2. Département de Sciences Economiques and CIREQ, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, QC, Canada, H3C 3J7
   Walter Bossert
3. Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z1
   David Donaldson

Authors

1. Charles Blackorby
2. Walter Bossert
3. David Donaldson

Corresponding author

Correspondence toWalter Bossert.

Additional information

The paper was presented at the conference on welfarist and non-welfarist approaches to public economics in Ghent, March 2004. We thank John Broome, Campbell Brown, Marc Fleurbaey, Wlodek Rabinowicz, John Roemer, John Weymark and two referees for comments and discussions. Financial support through a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged.

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Blackorby, C., Bossert, W. & Donaldson, D. Anonymous Single-profile Welfarism.Soc Choice Welfare 27, 279–287 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0131-1

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• Received: 17 May 2004
• Accepted: 06 June 2005
• Published: 30 June 2006
• Issue date: October 2006
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0131-1

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