The nexus between economic inequality and social welfare
Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - 14:10
in Mathematics & Economics
Equity (or, its counterpart, inequity) plays a fundamental role in the evaluation of the different dimensions of social welfare. But how can we consider and compare its different dimensions? These issues are in fact traditionally considered and compared across individuals—be it within national boundaries or across countries, but also over time, when we consider the distribution of resources over time and the related questions of savings, intergenerational distribution stemming from capital dynamics or the intertemporal use of natural resources. Finally, there's a third dimension ("states of the world" or future worlds) that takes into account the presence of uncertainty affecting the realizations of random variables.