Year: 2016
Type: report
Abstract: Recent work on collective intertemporal choice suggests that non-dictatorial social preferences are generically time inconsistent.We argue that this claim conflates time consistency with two distinct properties of preferences: stationarity and time invariance.While the conjunction of time invariance and stationarity implies time consistency, the converse does not hold.Although social preferences cannot be stationary, they may be time consistent if time invariance is abandoned.If individuals are discounted utilitarians, revealed preference provides no guidance on whether social preferences should be time consistent or time invariant.Nevertheless, we argue that time invariant social preferences are often normatively and descriptively problematic.
DOI: 10.3386/w22524
Authors: Antony Millner, Geoffrey Heal
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2510778263