The Utilitarian Social Choice Functional

Abstract

We introduce the concept of a social choice functional and provide two axiomatic characterizations of the utilitarian social choice functional. Subsequently we consider Harsanyi’s weighted utilitarianism and establish two more propositions concerning the same. While the first is an axiomatic characterization of Harsanyi’s weighted utilitarianism, the second provides a sufficient condition for exact Harsanyi’s weighted utilitarianism.