Characterizations of Consequentialism and Nonconsequentialism

doi:10.1006/jeth.2000.2747

Journal of Economic Theory

Volume 101, Issue 2, December 2001, Pages 423-436

https://doi.org/10.1006/jeth.2000.2747 Get rights and content

Abstract

By allowing for the possibility that individuals recognize the intrinsic value of choice along with the instrumental value thereof, we suppose that individuals express extended preference orderings of the following type: Choosing an alternative x from an opportunity set A is better than choosing an alternative y from an opportunity set B. Within this framework, we identify a consequentialist and a nonconsequentialist, who show contrasting attiduces toward alternatives vis-à-vis opportunities. This paper characterizes these attitudes in terms of some axioms, whereas the companion paper explores the implication of these concepts in the context of social choice theory à la Arrow. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D00, D60, D63, D71.

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Citation Excerpt :
Within the extended framework, the correspondence to the utility function is derived from an extended preference ordering over singleton pair alternatives consisting of each element in a given opportunity set. Suzumura and Xu (2001) propose the OFCS whose opportunity set evaluation is the cardinality-based ordering. The formal definition is as follows:
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^☆: Thanks are due to an anonymous referee whose incisive comments greatly improved the exposition of this paper. The first version of the paper was written while the second author was visiting the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University and he would like to thank the Institute for its hospitality.