Combining Monotonicity and Strong Equity: Construction and Representation of Orders on Infinite Utility Streams

Abstract

This paper studies the nature of social welfare orders on infinite utility streams, satisfying the efficiency principle known as Monotonicity and the consequentialist equity principle known as Strong Equity. It provides a complete characterization of domain sets for which there exists such a social welfare order which is in addition representable by a real valued function.It then shows that for those domain sets for which there is no such social welfare order which is representable, the existence of such a social welfare order necessarily entails the existence of a non-Ramsey set, a non-constructive object.