Can intergenerational equity be operationalized
Can intergenerational equity be operationalized
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代际公平能否落地
作者：
W. Zame
一个长期的功利主义传统是平等对待所有个人的理想，无论是现在活着的人还是尚未出生的人。文献将这一理想形式化为要求在无限效用流空间上建立一种偏好关系，该偏好关系是完全的、传递的、对有限排列不变的，并且尊重帕累托排序；简称为伦理偏好关系。本文认为，将这一理想付诸实践是有问题的。最简单的是，每一种伦理偏好关系都具有这样一种性质，即几乎所有(在外部测量意义上)效用流对都是冷漠的。即使我们放弃了完备性和对Pareto序的尊重，每个对有限排列不变的非自反偏好关系也具有几乎所有效用流对都是不可比较的(不是严格排序的)的性质。此外，任何伦理偏好关系都是不可衡量的。因此，伦理偏好关系的存在与几乎所有形式经济学和所有古典分析中使用的公理无关。最后，即使存在伦理偏好关系，也不能“明确描述”。这些结果对博弈论、宏观经济学和经济发展都有影响。
A long Utilitarian tradition has the ideal of equal regard for all individuals, both those now living and those yet to be born. The literature formalizes this ideal as asking for a preference relation on the space of infinite utility streams that is complete, transitive, invariant to finite permutations, and respects the Pareto ordering; an ethical preference relation, for short. This paper argues that operationalizing this ideal is problematic. Most simply, every ethical preference relation has the property that almost all (in the sense of outer measure) pairs of utility streams are indifferent. Even if we abandon completeness and respect for the Pareto ordering, every irreflexive preference relation that is invariant to finite permutations has the property that almost all pairs of utility streams are incomparable (not strictly ranked). Moreover, no ethical preference relation can be measurable. As a consequence, the existence of an ethical preference relation is independent of the axioms used in almost all of formal economics and all of classical analysis. Finally, even if an ethical preference relation exists, it cannot be "explicitly described." These results have implications for game theory, for macroeconomics, and for economic development.