Maximal Social Welfare Relations on Infinite Populations Satisfying Permutation Invariance

TL;DR

This paper characterizes a utilitarian social welfare relation on infinite populations as the maximal relation satisfying Pareto, permutation invariance, and quasi-independence, providing a new theoretical insight.

Contribution

It introduces a novel characterization of utilitarian SWRs on infinite populations through maximality under specific axioms.

Findings

Utilitarian SWR is the largest relation satisfying the axioms.

Permutation invariance is equivalent to relative anonymity and isomorphism invariance.

The paper provides a new axiomatic characterization of social welfare relations.

Abstract

We study social welfare relations (SWRs) on an infinite population. Our main result is a new characterization of a utilitarian SWR as the \emph{largest} SWR (in terms of subset when the weak relation is viewed as a set of pairs) which satisfies Strong Pareto, Permutation Invariance (elsewhere called ``Relative Anonymity'' and ``Isomorphism Invariance''), and a further ``Quasi-Independence'' axiom.