Universal Social Orderings: An Integrated Theory of Policy Evaluation, Inter-Society Comparisons, and Interpersonal Comparisons
提出通用社会排序概念，统一评估不同规模和偏好的个体与群体的福利，用于政策评估、国际比较、增长评估和不平等测量，并基于公理基础扩展社会选择理论。
We introduce the concept of a universal social ordering, defined on the set of pairs of an allocation and a preference profile of any finite population. It is meant to unify evaluations and comparisons of welfare (living standards) for individuals and populations of possibly different sizes and preferences. It can be used for policy evaluation, international comparisons, growth assessment, and inequality measurement. It even makes it possible to evaluate policy options that affect the size of the population or the preferences of its members. We study how to extend the theory of social choice in order to select such orderings on a rigorous axiomatic basis. We provide foundations for leximin as well as additively separable criteria. Key ingredients in this analysis are fairness principles in social aggregation, attitudes with respect to population size, and the bases of interpersonal comparisons. We discuss how this sheds light on recent developments in the empirical literature on international comparisons.