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date: 15 February 2019

Abstract and Keywords

There are at least as many views on how the welfare of individuals should be compared as there are authors who write on the subject. An indication of the bewildering range of issues considered relevant in the literature is provided by the book Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being (Elster & Roemer 1991). However, this article plans to interpret the interpersonal comparison of utility narrowly. Although it reviews some traditional approaches along the way, its focus is on what the modern economists mean when they talk about units of utility and how can such utils be compared. It is widely thought that utils assigned to different individuals cannot sensibly be compared at all.

Keywords: well-being, interpersonal comparison, utility, Playing for Real, utils

Ken Binmore

Ken Binmore , CBE FBA PhD BSc, is a mathematician turned economist and philosopher. He has held chairs at LSE, the University of Michigan and University College London. A wide range of applied work includes the design of major telecom auctions in many countries across the world. As a consequence of the £23.4 billion raised by the telecom auction he organized in the UK, he was described by Newsweek magazine as the “ruthless, poker‐playing economist who destroyed the telecom industry.” He nowadays devotes his time to applying game theory to the problem of the evolution of morality. His recent books include Natural Justice (Oxford University Pess), Does Game Theory Work? (MIT Press), and A Very Short Introduction to Game Theory (Oxford). He is currently a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol and a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at LSE.

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