Most legal academics and policymakers believe that notions of fairness should be accorded positive weight in evaluating legal policies. We explain, however, that ascribing importance to any notion of fairness (other than one concerned solely with the distribution of income) will sometimes lead...

In Fairness versus Welfare, we advance the thesis that social policies should be assessed based entirely on their effects on individuals' well-being. This thesis implies that no independent weight should be accorded to notions of fairness (other than many purely distributive notions). We support...

The paper reexamines the welfare economics of intergenerational risk. Risk and its resolution over time are modeled as a decision tree: in each period, the consumption of the current one-period living generation is to be traded-off against uncertain benefits of future generations; as time...

The paper reexamines the ethics of intergenerational risk. When risk re-solves gradually, earlier decisions cannot depend on the realization of later shocks and, consequently, some inequalities across generations are inevitable. To account for these inequalities, risky intergenerational...

Amartya Sen has shown how liberal rights can produce outcomes that everyone would prefer to avoid, thereby violating the Pareto principle. Similarly, Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell identify potential conflicts between the Pareto principle and notions of "fairness," which give weight to...

Amartya Sen has shown how liberal rights can produce outcomes that everyone would prefer to avoid, thereby violating the Pareto principle. Similarly, Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell identify potential conflicts between the Pareto principle and notions of "fairness" which give weight to...