This note reexamines the single-profile approach to social-choice theory. If an alternative is interpreted as a social state of affairs or a history of the world, it can be argued that a multi-profile approach is inappropriate because the information profile is determined by the set of...

In pure population problems, a single resource is to be distributed equally among the agents in a society, and the social planner chooses population size(s) and per-capita consumption(s) for each resource constraint and set of feasible population sizes within the domain of the solution. This...

This paper presents a case against the use of the sum of compensating variations as a cost-benefit test. The authors argue that (1) the ethical judgments implied by the test are not defensible; (2) positive sums of compensating variations occur without potential Pareto improvements, resulting in...