In this paper, we propose a new measure of horizontal equity that overcomes many of the shortcomings of previous proposed measures. Our starting point is the observation that a well-behaved social welfare function need not evaluate global' (vertical equity) differences in after-tax income using...

This paper establishes that, far from being able to derive the principle of horizontal equity from utilitarianism, the principle is actually in- consistent with utilitarianism in a variety of circumstances. We derive conditions under which (a) it is optimal to impose random tax schedules (ex...