We endow individuals that differ in skill levels and tastes for working with altruistic preferences for redistribution in a voting model where a unidimensional redistributive parameter is chosen by majority voting in a direct democracy. When altruistic preferences are desert-sensitive, i.e. when...

A set of agents with possibly different waiting costs have to receive the same service one after the other. Efficiency requires to maximize total welfare. Equity requires to at least treat equal agents equally. One must form a queue, set up monetary transfers to compensate agents having to wait,...

Forgiveness is an ethical ideal that advocates that a fresh start should be conferred on those individuals who regret their past choices. Grounded on such a principle, Fleurbaey (2005) proposes the use of the equivalent endowment as the proper measure of the welfare loss experienced by those who...

An early death is, undoubtedly, a serious disadvantage. However, the compensation of short-lived individuals has remained so far largely unexplored, probably because it appears infeasible. Indeed, short-lived agents can hardly be identified ex ante, and cannot be compensated ex post. We argue...

Harsanyi (1955) proved that, in the context of uncertainty, social ratio- nality and the Pareto principle impose severe constraints on the degree of priority for the worst-off that can be adopted in the social evaluation. Since then, the literature has hesitated between an ex ante approach that...