Willingness to take risk depends on whether the risk affects others as well as oneself and on how the risk affects oneś position vis-á-vis others. Taking a bet can improve oneś position relative to others or threaten it. We present an experiment that explores individual attitudes to lotteries...

We refine the understanding of individual preferences across social lotteries, whereby the payoffs of a pair of subjects are exposed to random shocks. We find that aggregate behavior is ex-post and ex-ante inequality averse, but also that there is a wide variety of individual preferences and...

Social lotteries are lotteries that are played along with someone else. The experimental literature indicates that risk attitudes depend on how one’s situation in the safe alternative compares to that of a peer. Evaluation of the risky alternative also depends on whether the lottery gives...

Social lotteries are lotteries that are played along with someone else. The experimental literature indicates that risk attitudes depend on how one's situation in the safe alternative compares to that of a peer. Evaluation of the risky alternative also depends on whether the lottery gives equal...

Suppose that there exists a positive (exogenous) probability that at each date of a possibly infinite future, the human species will disappear. We postulate an Ethical Observer (EO) who must solve an intertemporal welfare maximization problem under this kind of uncertainty, with preferences that...

We model an intergenerational society, with a representative agent at each date, who must deplete a renewable resource, from which he derives utility, to produce consumption goods. We adopt the intergenerational lexicographic minimum as the social welfare function. Initially, technological...

Egalitarian theorists, since Rawls, have in the main advocated equalizing some objective measure of individual well-being, such as primary goods, functioning, or resources, rather than subjective welfare. This discussion, however, has assumed, implicitly, a static environment. By analyzing a...