We characterize two different approaches to the idea of equality of opportunity. Roemer's social ordering is motivated by a concern to compensate for the effects of certain (non-responsibility) factors on outcomes. Van de gaer's social ordering is concerned with the equalization of the...

To take into account heterogeneity in a social welfare function, Ebert (1997) and Shorrocks (1995) show that the only consistent way of welfare measurement consists of either constructing an artificial distribution in which each household is weighted by the number of equivalent individuals, or...

Besley (1988) is one of the few exceptional articles containing non-welfarist optimal tax devices. Feehan(1990) reports an error in his first-best rules. The present note criticizes the fundamentals of Besley's second-best rules. These rules optimize the welfare or well-being of phantom agents...

We characterize a family of r-extended generalized Lorenz dominance quasi-orderings and a family of r-Gini welfare orderings, on the basis of two allegedly "incompatible" axioms for heterogeneous welfare comparisons (Ebert, 1997, Ebert and Moyes, 2003, Shorrocks, 1995), but at the cost of either...