Interpersonal utility comparisons (new developments)
In Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume (eds.) The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, London, 2008
Abstract
Recent developments on interpersonal utility comparisons rely on various interpretations of ‘utility’ indicators and combine in various degrees the ‘subjective’ appreciation of the social states by each individual and their ‘objective’ evaluation by the ethical observer. In a formal welfarist approach, interpersonal comparisons are specified by invariance conditions on social welfare functionals or on social welfare orderings. Interpersonal comparisons have also been introduced through scoring methods.
