Ordering Infinite Utility Streams: Efficiency, Continuity, and No Impatience
20 Pages Posted: 6 Mar 2014 Last revised: 8 Oct 2014
Date Written: September 30, 2014
Abstract
We study two related versions of the no-impatience postulate in the context of transitive and reflexive relations on infinite utility streams which are not necessarily complete. Both are excluded by the traditional (weak) anonymity axiom. We show explicit social welfare relations satisfying Strong Pareto and the weaker version of no-impatience that are compatible with continuity in all the traditional topologies in this field. However the stronger version of no-impatience is violated by all lower semi-continuous (in the sup or Campbell topologies) social welfare relations satisfying the Weak Pareto.
Keywords: Continuous social welfare relations, Infinite utility streams, Multi-utility representation, No Impatience, Richter-Peleg representation
JEL Classification: D70, D90
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation