Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/55150 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 649
Publisher: 
Queen Mary University of London, Department of Economics, London
Abstract: 
This paper analyses Rawls's celebrated difference principle, and its lexicographic extension, in societies with a finite and an infinite number of agents. A unified framework of analysis is set up, which allows one to characterise Rawlsian egalitarian principles by means of a weaker version of a new axiom - the Harm Principle - recently proposed by [12]. This is quite surprising, because the Harm principle is meant to capture a liberal requirement of noninterference and it incorporates no obvious egalitarian content. A set of new characterisations of the maximin and of its lexicographic refinement are derived, including in the intergenerational context with an infinite number of agents.
Subjects: 
difference principle
leximin
weak harm principle
infinite utility streams
JEL: 
D70
Q01
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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