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SOCIAL CHOICE AND JUST INSTITUTIONS: NEW PERSPECTIVES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2007

MARC FLEURBAEY
MARC FLEURBAEY*
Affiliation:
CNRS-CERSES, Paris, and IDEP
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Abstract

It has become accepted that social choice is impossible in the absence of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. This view is challenged here. Arrow obtained an impossibility theorem only by making unreasonable demands on social choice functions. With reasonable requirements, one can get very attractive possibilities and derive social preferences on the basis of non-comparable individual preferences. This new approach makes it possible to design optimal second-best institutions inspired by principles of fairness, while traditionally the analysis of optimal second-best institutions was thought to require interpersonal comparisons of well-being. In particular, this approach turns out to be especially suitable for the application of recent philosophical theories of justice formulated in terms of fairness, such as equality of resources.

Type
Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 15 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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