Old and new joint characterizations of leximin and variants of rank-weighted utilitarianism

Abstract

This paper proposes a new class of efficient and equitable social welfare orderings, a generalized leximin rule that includes rank-weighted utilitarianism, leximin, and their lexicographic compositions. While the famous Deschamps and Gevers’ joint characterization theorem shows that a Paretian, anonymous, separable social welfare ordering must be either weak utilitarianism, leximin, or leximax under the assumption of cardinal full comparability, this study provides a new joint characterization theorem in which imposing rank-separability, instead of separability, enables acceptable social welfare ordering to be the generalized leximin rule. This result is proven by an intuitive and easy-to-understand method, which also helps show the mechanism by which a class of Paretian, anonymous, and separable social welfare orderings is limited to weak utilitarianism and leximin.