Compensating the dead - Archive ouverte HAL Access content directly
Journal Articles Journal of Mathematical Economics Year : 2014

Compensating the dead

Abstract

An early death is, undoubtedly, a serious disadvantage. However, the compensation of short-lived individuals has remained so far largely unexplored, probably because it appears infeasible. Indeed, short-lived agents can hardly be identified ex ante, and cannot be compensated ex post. We argue that, despite those difficulties, a compensation can be carried out by encouraging early consumption in the life cycle. In a model with heterogeneous preferences and longevities, we show how a specific social criterion can be derived from intuitive principles, and we study the corresponding optimal policy under various informational assumptions.
No file

Dates and versions

halshs-01053598 , version 1 (31-07-2014)

Identifiers

Cite

Marc Fleurbaey, Marie-Louise Leroux, Grégory Ponthière. Compensating the dead. Journal of Mathematical Economics, 2014, 51, pp.28-41. ⟨10.1016/j.jmateco.2014.02.003⟩. ⟨halshs-01053598⟩
149 View
0 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More