The Nash social welfare function for a measure space of individuals

In this paper we consider the Nash social welfare function for a society which is given as an arbitrary finite measure space. We show that the Nash social welfare function for the society is derived from certain rationality criteria.     

Nash bargaining in ordinal environments

We analyze the implications of Nash’s (Econometrica 18:155–162, 1950) axioms in ordinal bargaining environments; there, the scale invariance axiom needs to be strenghtened to take into account all order-preserving transformations of the agents’ utilities. This axiom, called ordinal invariance, is a very demanding one. For two-agents, it is violated by every strongly individually rational bargaining rule. In general, no ordinally invariant bargaining rule satisfies the other three axioms of Nash. Parallel to Roth (J Econ Theory 16:247–251, 1977), we introduce a weaker independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) axiom that we argue is better suited for ordinally invariant bargaining rules. We show that the three-agent Shapley–Shubik bargaining rule uniquely satisfies ordinal invariance, Pareto optimality, symmetry, and this weaker IIA axiom. We also analyze the implications of other independence axioms.     

Full Nash implementation of neutral social functions

This paper characterizes neutral social functions that are fully implementable. A neutral social function must be monotonic and simple to be fully implementable under either the Nash equilibrium concept or the strong Nash equilibrium concept. If a neutral social function is monotonic and simple, then the social function is fully implementable by a set of Nash equilibria. For finite alternative sets a neutral social function will be fully implementable by a set of strong Nash equilibria if and only if it is monotonic, simple and dictatorial.     

Nash implementing social choice rules with restricted ranges

We consider Nash implementation of social choice rules with restricted ranges, i.e., where some of the available alternatives are chosen at no preference profile. We show that the appropriate adaptation of Maskin monotonicity to this context depends on the range of the mechanisms: the wider is this range, the weaker is the monotonicity condition to be used. As a result, mechanisms employing outcome functions which allow for out-of-range alternatives at off-equilibrium messages can Nash implement social choice rules which fail to be Nash implementable by mechanisms whose ranges are restricted to the range of the social choice rule to be implemented. The Walrasian social choice correspondence is a particular instance of this. Moreover, social choice rules which are not Maskin monotonic can be “monotonized” by the addition of artificial out-of-range alternatives—a point we illustrate through Solomon’s Dilemma.     

The social dilemma of big data: Donating personal data to promote social welfare

When using digital devices and services, individuals provide their personal data to organizations in exchange for gains in various domains of life. Organizations use these data to run technologies such as smart assistants, augmented reality, and robotics. Most often, these organizations seek to make a profit. Individuals can, however, also provide personal data to public databases that enable nonprofit organizations to promote social welfare if sufficient data are contributed. Regulators have therefore called for efficient ways to help the public collectively benefit from its own data. By implementing an online experiment among 1696 US citizens, we find that individuals would donate their data even when at risk of getting leaked. The willingness to provide personal data depends on the perceived risk level of a data leak but not on a realistic impact of the data on social welfare. Individuals are less willing to donate their data to the private industry than to academia or the government. Finally, individuals are not sensitive to whether the data are processed by a human-supervised or a self-learning smart assistant.     

出租车数量管制对社会福利的影响

运用经济学的研究方法对出租车行业的数量管制问题进行了考查。研究发现,由于出租车行业具有很强的竞争性,单纯依靠市场的自发调节就能够实现该行业的资源优化配置;对出租车行业的数量管制,不但影响了出租车行业的自身发展,而且造成了社会福利损失。事实上,管制的重要原因是为了获得管制租金而不是增进社会福利。因此放宽对出租车行业的数量管制才是增进社会福利的有效选择。     

On estimation of some abbreviated social welfare measures

Point and interval estimations of two abbreviated social welfare functions are studied based on Schutz and Gini coefficients. The limit distributions of the estimators are derived in terms of sample L-moments and mean absolute deviation. A simulation study is performed to assess the bias in the estimators and the coverage probability of the confidence intervals. Unlike the previous studies our results do not require the grouping of population into a fixed number of quantiles. The proposed methods use distribution-free unbiased estimators and exact sample L-moment variances. An application is given that illustrates the benefits of the proposed methods.     

On the impatience implications of Paretian social welfare functions

In this paper, we investigate the impatience implications resulting from the assumption of existence of a Paretian social welfare function (SWF) aggregating infinite utility streams. We show, for very general program spaces, that the set of utility streams, at which the SWF exhibits impatience, has the power of the continuum. In the context of a more special program space, which has figured prominently in the literature, we establish that this set is dense, so that even if there is a point in the program space at which the SWF does not exhibit impatience, there are points close to it at which it does. If the Paretian SWF is continuous (in the sup metric), we show that impatience is generic: the collection of points, at which the SWF does not exhibit impatience, is a closed, nowhere dense set.     

Leveraging the social welfare chain to provide resilience during disaster

Due to the rampant increase in disasters globally, resilience in supply chain and logistics is receiving greater research attention in various parts of the world. This paper considers the role and contribution of social welfare supply chains in providing resilience. This is a causal phenomenon which has been studied through an exploratory research by building a framework from extant literature, a case study on an Indian non-governmental organization and tested through a social network analysis. We show how in the wake of a disaster, these social welfare supply chains become enablers. The paper provides an inkling into how to improve community resilience in times of disaster. Further, we show how these supply chains use social cohesion embedded in the structure to provide efficiency, diversity and adaptability, thereby bringing resilience into the supply system. Another contribution of this study is the use of visualisation and analysis of social media representation tools for social network analysis in operations.     

Industrial development and social welfare: A case study of Iran

Nowadays, monitoring and evaluation of social welfare are of profound import in many countries. This study sought to shed some light on the impact of industrial development on the Iranian social welfare. The Iranian Social Welfare Composite Index (SWCI) and Sen Welfare index (SEN) considered as proxies of Iranian social welfare. To gauge the impact of industrialization on social welfare, Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) bound testing was utilized. The econometric models estimated using annual data from 1967 to 2015 and presented in terms of long-run and short-run dynamic relationships. The results indicate that industrial development had a significant impact on the Iranian social welfare and this impact has been stronger in the long run. In addition, oil revenues, inflation, unemployment and the Iraq-Iran War have had a significant impact on the Iranian social welfare during the period under review. Despite the contradictory impact of industrialization on the various dimensions of welfare, the results show that the industrial development has had a positive impact on the social welfare in Iran. So, the government can boost the effects of industrialization on social welfare by controlling its negative effects.     

The social impact of advice during disability welfare reform: from social return on investment to evidencing public value through realism and complexity

ABSTRACT

This article illustrates how advice services create diverse public values within welfare reform. It develops a social impact framework using public value, realism, and complexity literature. Starting from a social return on investment study of advice, qualitative interviews are analysed with twenty-two clients, who sought advice for welfare benefits, and had disabilities, or physical or mental health conditions. Integrating these clients’ experiences with wider evidence illustrates how advice services advocated for people’s needs within a complicated (and controversial) welfare system. However, advice services face funding cuts, benefit assessment costs have risen, and welfare reforms have yet to meet their aims.     

Can social security be welfare improving when there is demographic uncertainty?

This paper studies the welfare implications of a PAYG pension system in an overlapping generations (OLG) model with demographic uncertainty and incomplete markets. In the absence of public pensions, small cohorts tend to be favoured by the changes in relative prices implied by demographic shocks. PAYG defined-benefit systems can help to share the financial risks created by this type of demographic uncertainty across generations. Our careful quantitative analysis test this possibility with unfavourable results: the overall welfare impact of the public pensions is negative, due to the prominence of the crowding-out effect over the insurance effect.     

The effect of the minimum wage for tipped workers on firm strategy,employees and social welfare

Millions of workers derive much of their income from tips and are subject to the “tipped minimum wage” that differs from the regular minimum wage. This article examines the implications of the tipped minimum wage and shows that increasing it may lead restaurants to adopt a compulsory service charge in lieu of tipping to extract the economic rent enjoyed by waiters under tipping. Because servers are better off with tipping, this implies that increasing the tipped minimum wage in an attempt to increase servers' income may achieve the opposite result. Moreover, increasing the tipped minimum wage may reduce social welfare.     

The impact of entrepreneurship on economic,social and environmental welfare and its determinants: a systematic review

Management Review Quarterly - This paper presents a systematic review of (a) the impact of entrepreneurship on economic, social and environmental welfare and (b) the factors determining this...     

The political intergenerational welfare state

Using a three-period overlapping generations economy framework, we characterize an intergenerational welfare state with endogenous education and pension under voting. We show that although politically establishing Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) social security in isolation in a dynamically efficient economy will always reduce the capital investment and therefore the social welfare as expected, in contrast politically implementing education-pension policy package instead can improve both human and physical capital accumulation and social welfare over laissez faire. However for this the political influence of the old has to be small thus limiting the size of the PAYG social security program.