Equality, risk-aversion and contractarian social choice

• Book ID: 104635429
• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 956 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0040-5833
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00134213

✦ Synopsis

Abs~aet. "lhis paper is concerned with the analysis of risk-sensitive decisions in the contractarian theory of social choice. Developing a general form of social contract theory, it discusses the problem confronting a contractarian decision-maker who has to order a set of efficient distributions. A preliminary solution is offered in which the appropriate ordering is that yielded by application of the Lorenz curve measure to a distribution of primary goods. A more general solution is then offered, and a social welfare shares concept of equality is advanced, which incorporates the previous solution as a special case. Finally, the implications of these results for the reasonableness of nonlinear social welfare functions are discussed.