Equitable Intergenerational Preferences on Restricted Domains

This paper examines the existence of equitable preferences on intergenerational consumption paths in an infinite horizon setting. There are two ethical considerations that capture the concept of intergenerational equity: inequality aversion in allocations and equality in treating generations. They are embodied in the Pigou–Dalton principle and anonymity, respectively. We investigate the existence of binary relations that satisfy these two axioms, as well as other standard axioms, such as monotonicity, transitivity, or continuity, on various domains. We show that any domain admitting such a binary relation is quite restricted: its interior is empty and contains no sustainable consumption path.