Premium
The Malleability of Undiscounted Utilitarianism as a Criterion of Intergenerational Justice
Author(s) -
Asheim Geir B.,
Buchholz Wolfgang
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
economica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.532
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1468-0335
pISSN - 0013-0427
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0335.t01-1-00290
Subject(s) - malleability , utilitarianism , discounting , economics , economic justice , microeconomics , function (biology) , law and economics , political science , law , computer science , computer security , encryption , finance , ciphertext , evolutionary biology , biology
Discounting future utilities is often justified by the ethically motivated objective of protecting earlier generations from the excessive saving that seems to be implied by undiscounted utilitarianism in productive economies. We question this justification of discounting by showing that undiscounted utilitarianism has sufficient malleability within important classes of technologies: any efficient and non‐decreasing allocation can be the unique optimum according to an undiscounted utilitarian criterion for some choice of utility function.