How (not) to make everyone better off

Anna Mahtani (LSE) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (16 December, 2015) titled "How (not) to make everyone better off". Abstract: he concept of ‘pareto superiority’ plays a central role in welfare economics. Pareto superiority is sometimes taken as a relation between outcomes, and sometimes as a relation between actions – even where the outcome of the actions is uncertain. Whether one action is classed as (ex ante) pareto superior to another depends on the prospects under the actions for each person concerned. I argue that a person's prospects (in this context) can depend on how that person is designated. Without any constraints on acceptable designators, then, the concept of pareto superiority is incomplete and gives inconsistent results. I consider various ways of completing the concept, and draw out the implications for debates in welfare economics.

You can listen to How (not) to make everyone better off online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

How (not) to make everyone better off is an episode from MCMP by MCMP Team.

This episode is 00:48:50 long.

This episode was published on Mar 17, 2018.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from MCMP when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.