This paper examines how to satisfy a separability condition related to “independence of the utilities of the dead” (Blackorby et al., 1995; Bommier and Zuber, 2008) in the class of “expected equally distributed equivalent” social orderings (Fleurbaey, 2010). It also inquires into the...

Behavioral economics has shaken the view that individuals have well-defined, consistent and stable preferences. This raises a challenge for welfare economics, which takes as a key postulate that individual preferences should be respected. We agree with Bernheim (2009) and Bernheim and Rangel...

We discuss the conceptual foundations of measuring (in)equity in health and health care. After an overview of the recent developments in the measurement of socio-economic inequalities and in racial disparities, we show how these partial approaches can be seen as special cases of the more general...

In this paper we examine whether, and how, welfare economics should incorporate the insights from happiness and satisfaction studies. Our main point is that measuring well-being by reported satisfaction levels can come in conáict with individuals judgments about their own lives and that these...

We examine social orderings applied to infinite intergenerational consumption paths. Basic dilemmas between several reasonable axioms lead to a taxonomy and characterization of different kinds of orderings, some of which are well known extensions of the Ramsey criterion. We show how filters and...

Inequalities in health and health care are caused by different factors. Measuring "unfair"inequalities implies that a distinction is introduced between causal variables leading toethically legitimate inequalities and causal variables leading to ethically illegitimateinequalities. An example of...