Inequality aversion and separability in social risk evaluation

Marc Fleurbaey (1) , Stéphane Zuber (2, 3)

1 Woodrow Wilson School and Center for Human Values
2 CERSES - UMR 8137 - Centre de recherche sens, ethique, société
3 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne

This paper examines how to satisfy "independence of the utilities of the dead" (Blackorby et al. in Econometrica 63:1303-1320, 1995; Bommier and Zuber in Soc Choice Welf 31:415-434, 2008) in the class of "expected equally distributed equivalent" social orderings (Fleurbaey in J Polit Econ 118:649-680, 2010) and inquires into the possibility to keep some aversion to inequality in this context. It is shown that the social welfare function must either be utilitarian or take a special multiplicative form. The multiplicative form is compatible with any degree of inequality aversion, but only under some constraints on the range of individual utilities.

Mots clés: Risk; Ex post equity; Independence of the utilities of the dead

Domaines: Economies et finances

Marc Fleurbaey, Stéphane Zuber. Inequality aversion and separability in social risk evaluation. Economic Theory, 2013, 54 (3), pp.675-692. ⟨10.1007/s00199-012-0730-2⟩. ⟨hal-00979778⟩