Wolfgang Buchholz (University of Regensburg): “Treating Generations Fairly"

In recent years the distributional conflict, which exists between different generations, has once again become an important topic in economics, especially in the context of the climate problem and the Stern Review. In this presentation various criteria will be discussed and compared which, in the framework of ethical social choice theory, can be applied to attain a fair balance of interest between the different generations, i.e. to avoid overburdening both for the future and for the present. In addition to the more traditional topics in the ethics of intergenerational distribution, such as sustainability, utility discounting and inequality aversion, contractualist approaches (as suggested by Thomas M. Scanlon and more recently by Elizabeth Finneron-Burns) will also be considered.