Individual Sovereignty and Other-Regarding Preferences

Abstract

We consider the social aggregation of preferences over lotteries in the presence of other-regarding preferences. If society respects each individual's sovereignty, an axiom we propose akin to Sen's Liberalism, then society's utility is a linear combination of individuals' self-regarding utilities. That is, other-regarding preferences can only influence the weights society places on each individual. We next characterize the unique weighting method under which society's weight ratio between two individuals is the geometric mean of that of all individuals. The first distinguishing axiom concerns the consistency of sequential aggregation, while the second concerns consensus across changes in individuals' other-regarding preferences. We extend the first result to a setting with feasibility constraints and a setting with subjective uncertainty.