EQUITY AND CONTINUITY WITH A CONTINUUM OF GENERATIONS

Abstract

In this paper we consider social preferences over intergenerational consumption paths for a continuum of generations. We prove that equal treatment of all generations is incompatible with Mackey continuity of social preferences under mild axioms such as nontriviality and asymmetry. We also show that this impossibility result is tight in the sense that for each of the four axioms there exists a social preference relation violating it but satisfying all the other axioms.