Utilitarianism versus fairness in welfare economics
Utilitarianism versus fairness in welfare economics
复制标题
福利经济学中的功利主义与公平
DOI：
10.1017/cbo9780511619595.012
复制
发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
François Maniquet
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Fleurbaey;François Maniquet
功利主义在许多方面与公平理论（尤其是罗尔斯的理论）是对立的。在这里，我们想把重点放在一个很少被讨论的特殊划分上，尽管它反映在福利经济学的结构中。福利经济学目前确实被分为两个截然不同的分支。一个分支研究社会福利功能，并投入大量精力研究功利主义。另一种是研究经济模型中的公平分配，形式上主要关注分配规则。区别如下。社会福利函数将可能情境类中的每个成员与所有可能选择的排序联系起来，而分配规则仅将类中的每个成员与“最佳”选择的选择联系起来。正如社会选择理论早就指出的那样，分配规则是一种排序，尽管很简单（任何两个选择的分配以及任何两个非选择的分配都被认为是社会无关的），而且排序会立即导致分配规则（在每种情况下选择最佳方案）。实际上，这两个分支之间还有第二个重要的区别。前者研究的社会福利函数的论点是人际间可比较的效用（通常在水平、差异或比率上可比较），而代表后者的整个文献体系纯粹是序数的，除了代理人对简单替代方案的偏好外，没有利用任何其他福利信息
Utilitarianism has been opposed to theories of fairness (especially Rawls’s theory) in many respects. We want to focus here on a particular division that has been seldom discussed, although it is reflected in the structure of welfare economics. Welfare economics is indeed currently separated into two very different branches. One branch deals with social welfare functions and devotes a substantial energy to the study of utilitarianism. The other studies fair allocation in economic models and, formally, its main focus is on allocation rules. The difference is the following. A social welfare function associates each member in a class of possible contexts with a ranking of all possible alternatives, whereas an allocation rule only associates each member in the class with a selection of “best” alternatives. As it has long since been noted in the theory of social choice, an allocation rule is a kind of ranking, albeit simple (any two selected allocations as well as any two nonselected allocations being deemed socially indifferent), and a ranking immediately leads to an allocation rule (which selects the best alternative in every context). Actually, there is a second important difference between these two branches. The arguments of the social welfare functions studied by the former are interpersonally comparable utilities (usually comparable in levels, differences, or ratios), whereas the whole body of literature representing the latter is purely ordinal, making use of no other welfare information than the preferences of the agents over simple alternatives.1