Differences in preferences are important to explain variation in individuals' behavior. There is however no consensus on how to take these differences into account when evaluating policies. While prominent in the economic literature, the standard utilitarian criterion faces two major...

This paper reviews recent research on the aggregation of heterogeneous time preferences. Main results are illustrated in simple Ramsey models with two or three agents who differ in their discount factors. We employ an intertemporal view on these models and argue that preferences of a decision...

This paper is based on the ideas of political philosopher John Rawls who suggested that a just society is one which would be created behind a "veil of ignorance", that is to say, without knowing where one would end up in the society's distribution of talent and other attributes valued in the...

Undiscounted utilitarianism as a criterion of intergeneration justice has been questioned for different reasons: It has been argued (1) that any complete ordering of allocations with an infinite number of generations guaranteeing an optimal allocation must involve discounting, and (2) that...

We introduce distributive justice into a simple model of growth and distribution. Two groups ("classes") of otherwise identical, capital-rich and capital-poor individuals ("capitalists") and ("workers") are in conflict over factor (labour-capital) shares. Capitalists' (workers') ideal labour...

Distributions of language rights in multilingual settings are analyzed from a normative viewpoint in this chapter. If the cost structure of providing rights is concave in the number of beneficiaries, then a critical-mass criterion for the determination of an optimal rights structure results. It...

Based on the concepts of justice by Hayek, Rawls and Buchanan we argue that the growing political dissatisfaction in industrialized countries is rooted in the asymmetric pattern in monetary policies since the 1980s for two reasons. First, the structurally declining interest rates and the...

Why might the European member states seek for Fiscal Union? Coordination, macro-stability purposes and provision of (European) public goods are certainly goals of paramount importance for the implementation of Fiscal Union at European level. However, there is an equally important component of...

An important element for the public support of policies is their perceived justice. At the same time most policy choices have uncertain outcomes. We report the results of a first experiment investigating just allocations of resources when some recipients are exposed to uncertainty. Although,...

The paper reexamines the welfare economics of intergenerational risk. Risk and its resolution over time are modeled as a decision tree: in each period, the consumption of the current one-period living generation is to be traded-off against uncertain benefits of future generations; as time...