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Foundations of utilitarianism under risk and variable population
Spears, Dean; Zuber, Stéphane - 2021
Utilitarianism is the most prominent family of social welfare functions. We present three new axiomatic ….'s (1998) Expected Critical-Level Generalized Utilitarianism (ECLGU) is equivalent to a new axiom holding that it is better to … novel characterizations extend classic axiomatizations of utilitarianism from settings with either social risk or variable …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012583668
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A soul's view of the optimal population problem
De la Croix, David; Doepke, Matthias - 2021
A long-standing challenge for welfare economics is to develop welfare criteria that can be applied to allocations with different population levels. Such a criterion is essential to resolve the optimal population problem, i.e., the tradeoff between population size and the welfare of each person...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012493350
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Earmarking and the political support of fat taxes
Cremer, Helmuth; Goulão, Catarina; Roeder, Kerstin - 2015
A fat and a healthy good provide immediate gratification, and cause health costs or benefits in the long run, which are misperceived. Additionally, the fat good (healthy good) increases (decreases) health care costs by increasing (decreasing) the probability of suffering from a chronic disease...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011336980
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Are two tax rates better than one?
FitzRoy, Felix R.; Jin, Jim Y. - 2009
Should two-band income taxes be progressive given a general income distribution? We provide a negative answer under utilitarian and max-min welfare functions. While this result clarifies some ambiguities in the literature, it does not rule out progressive taxes in general. If we maximize total...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003845516
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When is voting optimal?
Ben-Yashar, Ruth; Danziger, Leif - 2014
We consider a framework where the optimal decision rule determining the collective choice depends in a simple way on the decision makers' posterior probabilities of a particular state of nature. Nevertheless, voting is generally an inefficient way to make collective choices and this paper sheds...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010457829
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Symmetric and asymmetric committees
Ben-Yashar, Ruth; Danziger, Leif - 2011
This paper studies the assignment of decision makers to two committees that make decisions by a simple majority rule. There is an even number of decision makers at each of various skill levels and each committee has an odd number of members. Surprisingly, even with the symmetric assumptions in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009309640
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How transparency kills information aggregation : theory and experiment
Fehrler, Sebastian; Hughes, Niall - 2015
under secrecy. This occurs despite subjects revealing more information under transparency than theory predicts. …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010516456
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On the optimal composition of committees
Ben-Yashar, Ruth; Danziger, Leif - 2014
This paper derives a simple characterization of how to optimally divide an organization's experts into different decision-making committees. The focus is on many three-member committees that make decisions by a simple majority rule. We find that the allocation of experts to committees is optimal...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010246652
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The unanimity rule and extremely asymmetric committees
Ben-Yashar, Ruth; Danziger, Leif - 2016
This paper analyzes how to allocate experts into committees that use the unanimity rule to make decisions. We show that an optimal allocation of experts is extremely asymmetric. To reach the optimal allocation, therefore, one needs only to rank the experts in terms of their abilities and then...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011457362
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The political (in)stability of funded social security
Beetsma, Roel; Komada, Oliwia; Makarski, Krzysztof; … - 2021
We analyze the political stability of funded social security. Using a stylized theoretical framework we study the mechanisms behind governments capturing social security assets in order to lower current taxes. The results and the driving mechanisms carry over to a fully-fledged and carefully...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012648353