Climate policies have stochastic consequences that involve a great number of generations. This calls for evaluating social risk (what kind of societies will future people be born into) rather than individual risk (what will happen to people during their own lifetimes). As a response we propose...

Evaluation of climate policies and other issues requires a variable population setting where population is endogenously determined. We propose and axiomatize the rank-discounted critical-level utilitarian social welfare order. It is shown to ll out the space between critical-level utilitarianism...

Climate stabilization requires low GHG emissions. Is this consistent with nondecreasing human welfare? Our welfare index, called quality of life (QuoL), emphasizes education, knowledge, and the environment. We calibrate a multigenerational model with education, physical capital, knowledge and...

We propose and axiomatize probability adjusted rank-discounted critical-level generalized utilitarianism (PARDCLU). We thus generalize rank-discounted utilitarianism (RDU) (proposed by Zuber and Asheim, 2012) to variable population and risky situations and thereby take important steps towards...

The paper reexamines the ethics of intergenerational risk. When risk re-solves gradually, earlier decisions cannot depend on the realization of later shocks and, consequently, some inequalities across generations are inevitable. To account for these inequalities, risky intergenerational...

We contribute to population ethics by proposing and axiomatizing rank-discounted critical-level generalized utilitarianism (RDCLU). Population ethics is needed for evaluation of policies, e.g., concerning climate change, where population size depends on the chosen policy. We show that...

For several decades, there has been a discussion in economics on how to appropriately measure economic welfare. Although it is common perception that a simple GDP evaluation bears several shortcomings, GDP per capita is still the most prominent measure of countries' welfare and of its...

The discounted utilitarian criterion for infinite horizon social choice has been criticized for treating generations unequally. We propose an extended rank-discounted utilitarian (ERDU) criterion instead. The criterion amounts to discounted utilitarianism on non-decreasing streams, but it treats...

This paper uses Lorenz Curve and Gini Index with adjustment to per capita historical cumulative emission and constructs Carbon Gini Index to measure inequality in climate change area. The analysis using Carbon Gini Index shows that 70% of carbon space in the atmosphere has been used for unequal...

Income inequality in China is severe; measured by the Gini-coefficient it amounted to 0.46 in 2011; wealth distribution is even worse with 0.61. These disparities led to a major shift in emphasis of politics in general and of the Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development by the...