It has been known that, in aggregating infinite utility streams, there does not exist any social welfare function, which satisfies the axioms of Pareto, inter-generational equity and continuity. We show that the impossibility result persists even without imposing the continuity axiom, and in...

Much of economics is built on the assumption of individuals being driven by nothing but

The role of a person's identity and sense of integration into society as instruments

The standard route for aggregating infinite utility streams using a real-valued representation runs into well-known difficulties as soon as we insist on the axiom of inter-generational equity. The aim of this paper is to explore what is feasible without abandoning this axiom. The paper focusses...

This paper demonstrates how our sense of identity can emerge out of mere markers of social distinction that may have no innate significance, but, nevertheless, spread to various aspects of our lives and be the root of conflict. The basis of such conflicts could arise from the use of race to form...

This paper models a developing nation that faces a foreign exchange shortage and hence its demand for foreign goods is limited both by its income and its foreign exchange balance. Availability of international credit relaxes the second constraint. It is shown that in this setting the...

In this paper, we examine the restrictions that any concept of extended anonymity must satisfy in order to be compatible with the existence of a Paretian social welfare relation (SWR). We completely characterize the class of permissible permutations associated with any Paretian SWR; that is,...