Rawls (1971, 1993) suggests that a primary goods index should be the basis for interpersonal comparisons in a theory of justice, but it is well known that in general this approach is not compatible with the Pareto principle. This is the indexing impasse. Sen (1985, 1991) argues that this is...

The difference principle of Rawls has been wrongly translated in the formal literature on welfare economics and social choice theory. The difference principle is concerned with the welfare of the members of the least advantaged segment, and, thus, does not - as frequently argued - assign...

It is not straightforward to define the ethics of responsibility in cases where the consequences of changes in factors within our control are partly determined by factors beyond our control. In this paper, we suggest that one plausible view is to keep us responsible for the parts of the...

We analyze the equity properties of insurance premium schemes where agents are partitioned into groups with different average accident probabilities and each individual has to pay a premium according to the average probability of the group to which it belongs. In particular, we examine the...

We consider a simple production model and we assume that agents have unequal production skills which can in no way be attributed to their responsibility. We study how it is possible, if at all, to compensate for differential skills by applying Rawls's idea of a collective sharing in the benefits...