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J. S. Mill's Liberal Principle and Unanimity

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  • Edward J. Green

Abstract

The broad concept of an individual's welfare is actually a cluster of related specific concepts that bear a "family resemblance" to one another. One might care about how a policy will affect people both in terms of their subjective preferences and also in terms of some notion of their objective interests. This paper provides a framework for evaluation of policies in terms of welfare criteria that combine these two considerations. Sufficient conditions are provided for such a criterion to imply the same ranking of social states as does Pareto's unanimity criterion. Sufficiency is proved via study of a community of agents with interdependent ordinal preferences.

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  • Edward J. Green, 2019. "J. S. Mill's Liberal Principle and Unanimity," Papers 1903.07769, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1903.07769
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sen, Amartya, 1970. "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(1), pages 152-157, Jan.-Feb..
    2. Edward Green, 1982. "Equilibrium and efficiency under pure entitlement systems," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 185-212, January.
    3. Bergstrom, Ted, 1989. "Love and Spaghetti, the Opportunity Cost of Virtue," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 165-173, Spring.
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C6 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling
    • D5 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium
    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics

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