Frikk Nesje, Department of Economics
"A Modular Theory of Intergenerational Justice: Discounting and Inequality"
Abstract
We study theories of intergenerational justice that disentangle normative views on discounting and inequality. Any modular social welfare function is uniquely identified by a time-discounting function---capturing attitudes across generations---and an aggregator function---capturing attitudes towards inequality between generations. The rich choice of such functions allows our theory to include standard approaches as special cases and unveils yet unexplored families of alternative criteria. Our axiomatic characterization clarifies the properties and limits of disentangling discounting and inequality.
Contact person: Peter Birch Sørensen