Can a Reallocation of Initial Endowments Improve Social Welfare?

El Trimestre Económico, Vol. LXXV, pp. 125-133, 2008

11 Pages Posted: 18 May 2006 Last revised: 6 Mar 2018

See all articles by Elvio Accinelli

Elvio Accinelli

Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana

Juan Gabriel Brida

Universidad de la República

Leobardo Plata

Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, México

Martin Puchet Anyul

National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) - Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas

Date Written: June 1, 2006

Abstract

In this paper we show that in a pure exchange economy where social weights and total resources are fixed there is no possibility to improve the social welfare by means of efficient reallocations of the resources. However, if social weights are not fixed but can be selected from a particular set, then it is possible to improve the social welfare along an efficient path. On the other hand we show that in an intertemporal economy, the possibility of improving the social welfare by a reallocation is strongly related with the level of intertemporal discount factor. In some particular cases it is possible, to improve social welfare by an intertemporal reallocation of resources. In addition, we show that it is possible to find a social rule to choose a walrasian equilibrium from an order relation defined on the set of social weights.

Keywords: Pareto efficiency, Walrasian Equilibrium, social welfare

JEL Classification: C61, D50, D60

Suggested Citation

Accinelli, Elvio and Brida, Juan Gabriel and Plata, Leobardo and Puchet Anyul, Martin, Can a Reallocation of Initial Endowments Improve Social Welfare? (June 1, 2006). El Trimestre Económico, Vol. LXXV, pp. 125-133, 2008, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=902859

Elvio Accinelli

Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana ( email )

Calzada del Hueso 1100
Coyoacan
Mexico
Mexico

Juan Gabriel Brida (Contact Author)

Universidad de la República ( email )

Av. 18 de Julio
Montevideo, 1968
Uruguay

Leobardo Plata

Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, México ( email )

Mexico

Martin Puchet Anyul

National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) - Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas ( email )

Av. Universidad 3000
Edif. de las Oficinas Administrativas 2
04510 Ciudad Universitaria
Mexico

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
57
Abstract Views
843
Rank
659,560
PlumX Metrics