Theoretical Economics

Journal of the Econometric Society

Edited by: Federico Echenique • ISSN (e): 1555-7561 • ISSN (print): 1933-6837

Theoretical Economics: May, 2018, Volume 13, Issue 2

Who's afraid of aggregating money metrics?

https://doi.org/10.3982/TE2825
p. 467-484

Kristof Bosmans, Koen Decancq, Erwin Ooghe

We provide an axiomatic justification to aggregate money metrics. The key axiom requires the approval of richer-to-poorer transfers that preserve the overall efficiency of the distribution. This transfer principle, together with the basic axioms anonymity, continuity, monotonicity, and a version of welfarism, characterizes a standard social welfare function defined over money metric utilities.


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