Variable population egalitarian ethics and the critical-levela note

  1. Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo
  2. Ballester Oyarzun, Miguel Ángel
  3. Marco Gil, María del Carmen
  4. Nieto Vázquez, Jorge
Revista:
Documentos de Trabajo ( Universidad Pública de Navarra. Departamento de Economía )

Año de publicación: 2000

Número: 13

Tipo: Documento de Trabajo

Resumen

This paper explores the introduction of a variable critical-level in a variable population context. We focus the attention on the �Critical-Level Egalitarian Rule�, a social evaluation procedure which compares two social states as follows: (i) It reproduces the leximin criterion when applied to vectors of identical dimension and (ii) otherwise, it completes the small one with so many times a variable critical-level as to make the two vectors equal in size and applies the leximin criterion again. We prove that the use of a strict monotonic critical-level leads to the intransitivity of the social evaluation rule. This problem disappears when a weak monotonicity condition is required.