A bitter choice turned sweet: How acknowledging individuals-concern at having a low relative income serves to align utilitarianism and egalitarianism

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• 作者：Oded Stark ; Marcin Jakubek ; Martyna Kobus
• 关键词：Utilitarianism ; Egalitarianism ; Social welfare maximization ; Low relative income ; H0 ; I0 ; I30 ; I31
• 刊名：Journal of Evolutionary Economics
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：July 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：25
• 期：3
• 页码：541-557
• 全文大小：250 KB
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• 作者单位：Oded Stark (1) (2) (3) (4)
  Marcin Jakubek (5)
  Martyna Kobus (5)
  
  1. ZEF, University of Bonn, Walter-Flex-Strasse 3, 53113, Bonn, Germany
  2. University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
  3. University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
  4. Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
  5. Institute of Economics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
  
• 刊物主题：Economic Theory; Microeconomics; Economic Growth; R & D/Technology Policy; Entrepreneurship;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：1432-1386

文摘

When individuals-utility is a convex combination of their income and their concern at having a low relative income (the weights attached to income and to the concern at having a low relative income sum up to one), the maximization of aggregate utility yields an equal income distribution. This alignment of utilitarianism and egalitarianism is obtained for any number of individuals, and for general utility functions that are convex combinations of a power function of income and the concern at having a low relative income. The alignment can also hold when the weights sum up to a number different than one.