This book presents a synthesis of recent developments in axiomatic
analyses of social welfare evaluation in social choice theory. It covers
three different contexts of social welfare evaluation, namely, social
welfare evaluation within a generation, intergenerational social welfare
evaluation involving infinitely many generations, and intergenerational
social welfare evaluation with variable population sizes of generations.
Analyzing these three different but related contexts of social welfare
evaluation in a unified manner, the book places the emphasis on the
close linkage between them and provides readers with new insight
regarding the relationship between them.
Evaluation criteria discussed in the book are firmly rooted in moral
philosophy. Besides the axiomatic analyses of utilitarian and
egalitarian evaluation criteria, newly developed results on compromised
criteria between the utilitarian and egalitarian evaluation criteria are
covered as well. The book is recommended to readers who seek an
up-to-date integrated overview of a large and broad body of the
literature on the axiomatic analysis of social welfare evaluation.