IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v33y1978i2p33-48.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social choice and economic growth

Author

Listed:
  • Nathaniel Beck

Abstract

Optimal economic growth deals with the problem of how societies make tradeoffs between current and future consumption, or equivalently, how societies make decisions about investment rates. Until now, theorists have simply assumed that there is some societal utility function which planners can maximize. Social choice theorists have thrown doubt upon the concept of a societal utility function. We treat optimal economic growth as a problem in social choice theory. Assume that citizens have preferences over the various growth plans. Under what conditions will a majority rule equilibrium exist? We show that such an equilibrium can exist for a Ramsey type problem. We then briefly consider social choice in the so-called “labor surplus” economy. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Social Sciences Division 1978

Suggested Citation

  • Nathaniel Beck, 1978. "Social choice and economic growth," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 33-48, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:33:y:1978:i:2:p:33-48
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00118356
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00118356
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00118356?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen A. Marglin, 1963. "The Social Rate of Discount and The Optimal Rate of Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 77(1), pages 95-111.
    2. Ray C. Fair, 1975. "On Controlling the Economy to Win Elections," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 397, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    3. R. H. Strotz, 1955. "Myopia and Inconsistency in Dynamic Utility Maximization," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 23(3), pages 165-180.
    4. David Cass, 1965. "Optimum Growth in an Aggregative Model of Capital Accumulation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 32(3), pages 233-240.
    5. E. S. Phelps & R. A. Pollak, 1968. "On Second-Best National Saving and Game-Equilibrium Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 35(2), pages 185-199.
    6. N. H. Stern, 1972. "Optimum Development in a Dual Economy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 39(2), pages 171-184.
    7. A. K. Dixit, 1968. "Optimal Development in the Labour-Surplus Economy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 35(1), pages 23-34.
    8. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Borissov, Kirill & Pakhnin, Mikhail & Puppe, Clemens, 2017. "On discounting and voting in a simple growth model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 185-204.
    2. Boylan, Richard T., 1996. "Voting over investment," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 187-208.
    3. Fernando Tohmé & M. Ángeles Caraballo & Carlos Dabús, 2022. "Instability, political regimes and economic growth. A theoretical framework," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 291-317, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Borissov, Kirill & Pakhnin, Mikhail & Wendner, Ronald, 2024. "General equilibrium and dynamic inconsistency," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    2. Gowdy, John & Rosser, J. Barkley & Roy, Loraine, 2013. "The evolution of hyperbolic discounting: Implications for truly social valuation of the future," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(S), pages 94-104.
    3. Kirill Borissov & Mikhail Pakhnin & Ronald Wendner, 2020. "Naive Agents with Quasi-hyperbolic Discounting and Perfect Foresight," EUSP Department of Economics Working Paper Series 2020/03, European University at St. Petersburg, Department of Economics.
    4. Ebert, Sebastian & Wei, Wei & Zhou, Xun Yu, 2020. "Weighted discounting—On group diversity, time-inconsistency, and consequences for investment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    5. Nesje, Frikk, 2020. "Cross-dynastic Intergenerational Altruism," Working Papers 0678, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    6. Millner, Antony & Healey, Andrew, 2018. "Discounting by committee," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 90246, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Antony Millner & Geoffrey Heal, 2015. "Collective intertemporal choice: time consistency vs. time invariance," GRI Working Papers 220, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    8. Millner, Antony & Heal, Geoffrey, 2018. "Discounting by committee," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 91-104.
    9. Christian Moser & Pedro Olea de Souza e Silva, 2019. "Optimal Paternalistic Savings Policies," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 17, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Lex Borghans & Angela Lee Duckworth & James J. Heckman & Bas ter Weel, 2008. "The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(4).
    11. Laureti, Carolina & Szafarz, Ariane, 2023. "Banking regulation and costless commitment contracts for time-inconsistent agents," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    12. Maria Arvaniti & Chandra K. Krishnamurthy & Anne-Sophie Crépin, 2019. "Time-consistent resource management with regime shifts," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 19/329, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    13. Alia, Ishak & Chighoub, Farid & Sohail, Ayesha, 2016. "A characterization of equilibrium strategies in continuous-time mean–variance problems for insurers," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 212-223.
    14. Laurent Denant-Boemont & Enrico Diecidue & Olivier l’Haridon, 2017. "Patience and time consistency in collective decisions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 181-208, March.
    15. Faralla, Valeria & Novarese, Marco & Ardizzone, Antonella, 2017. "Framing Effects in Intertemporal Choice: A Nudge Experiment," MPRA Paper 82086, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Ryoji Ohdoi & Koichi Futagami, 2021. "Welfare implications of non-unitary time discounting," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(1), pages 85-115, February.
    17. Bart Cockx & Corinna Ghirelli & Bruno Van der Linden, 2013. "Monitoring Job Search Effort with Hyperbolic Time Preferences and Non-Compliance: A Welfare Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 4187, CESifo.
    18. Franco Modigliani, 1977. "The monetarist controversy; or, should we forsake stabilization policies?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Spr suppl, pages 27-46.
    19. Resce, Giuliano, 2022. "The impact of political and non-political officials on the financial management of local governments," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 943-962.
    20. Ramser, Hans Jürgen, 1977. "Anmerkungen zur Theorie politischer Konjunkturzyklen," Discussion Papers, Series I 105, University of Konstanz, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:33:y:1978:i:2:p:33-48. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.