Impartiality, Priority, and Solidarity in the Theory of Justice

The ethic of 'priority' is a compromise between the extremely compensatory ethic of 'welfare equality' and the needs-blind ethic of 'income equality'. We propose an axiom of priority, and characterize resource-allocation rules that are impartial, prioritarian, and solidaristic. They comprise a class of rules which equalize across individuals some index of resources and welfare. Consequently, we provide an ethical rationalization for the many applications in which such indices have been used (e.g., the 'human development index', 'index of primary goods', etc.).

[1]  A. Sen.  On Economic Inequality , 1974 .

[2]  A. Sen,et al.  Equality of What? , 1980, Seven Deadly Economic Sins.

[3]  Barry O'Neill,et al.  A problem of rights arbitration from the Talmud , 1982, Math. Soc. Sci..

[4]  W. Thomson.  Problems of fair division and the Egalitarian solution , 1983 .

[5]  J. Roemer.  Equality of Resources Implies Equality of Welfare , 1986 .

[6]  H. Peyton Young,et al.  On Dividing an Amount According to Individual Claims or Liabilities , 1987, Math. Oper. Res..

[7]  Hervé Moulin,et al.  The Pure Compensation Problem: Egalitarianism Versus Laissez-Fairism , 1987 .

[8]  The solidarity axiom in parametric surplus-sharing problems☆ , 1991 .

[9]  Yves Sprumont.  Axiomatizing Ordinal Welfare Egalitarianism When Preferences May Vary , 1996 .

[10]  W. Thomson.  Consistent Allocation Rules , 1996 .

[11]  J. Roemer.  Theories of Distributive Justice , 1997 .

[12]  E. Said,et al.  The Tanner Lectures on Human Values , 1997 .

[13]  Derek Parfit,et al.  Equality and Priority , 1997 .

[14]  Youngsub Chun,et al.  Equivalence of axioms for bankruptcy problems , 1999, Int. J. Game Theory.

[15]  M. Fleurbaey,et al.  Cooperative production with unequal skills: The solidarity approach to compensation , 1999 .

[16]  Bettina Klaus,et al.  Solidarity and Probabilistic Target Rules , 2001 .

[17]  Hervé Moulin,et al.  Axiomatic cost and surplus sharing , 2002 .

[18]  William Thomson,et al.  Axiomatic and game-theoretic analysis of bankruptcy and taxation problems: a survey , 2003, Math. Soc. Sci..

[19]  J. Rawls,et al.  A Theory of Justice , 1971, Princeton Readings in Political Thought.