Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/197138 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Citation: 
[Journal:] Theoretical Economics [ISSN:] 1555-7561 [Volume:] 13 [Issue:] 1 [Publisher:] The Econometric Society [Place:] New Haven, CT [Year:] 2018 [Pages:] 19-37
Publisher: 
The Econometric Society, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
This paper presents an infinite-horizon version of intergenerational utilitarianism. By studying discounted utilitarianism as the discount factor tends to one, we obtain a new welfare criterion: limit-discounted utilitarianism (LDU). We show that LDU meets the standard assumptions of efficiency, equity, and interpersonal comparability, but allows us to compare more pairs of utility streams than commonly used utilitarian criteria, including the overtaking criterion and the catching-up criterion. We also introduce a principle of compensation for postponements of utility streams and use it to characterize the LDU criterion on a restricted domain.
Subjects: 
Utilitarianism
intergenerational equity
time preference
JEL: 
D63
D70
D90
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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