The veil of ignorance has been used often as a tool for recommending what justice requires with respect to the distribution of wealth. We complete Harsanyi’s model of the veil of ignorance by appending information permitting interpersonal comparability of welfare. We show that the...

The ethic of 'priority' is a compromise between the extremely compensatory ethic of 'welfare equality' and the needs-blind ethic of ‘income equality’. We propose an axiom of priority, and characterize resource allocation rules that are impartial, prioritarian, and solidaristic. They comprise...

We analyze a model of resource allocation in which agents' abilities (to transform the resourceinto an interpersonally comparable outcome) and initial endowments may differ. We imposeethical and operational axioms in this model and characterize some allocation rules as a resultof combining these...