INCOME DISTRIBUTION, VALUE JUDGMENTS, AND WELFARE: A CORRECTION.

The article discusses the assumptions made in the paper "Income Distribution, Value Judgments, and Welfare," that appeared in a previous issue of the "Quarterly Journal of Economics." The paper assumed that distribution value judgments are independent of the level of total income. However, no such assumption can be maintained in the multi-commodity case as it either conflicts with the underlying postulate that welfare is a function of individual utilities or else implies that all indifference maps are homothetic (indifference curves are radial blow-ups of each other). An examination of the ordinary box-diagram convinces one that the only case in which this effect cannot arise is where all indifference maps are homothetic, a condition much too restrictive to be assumed. The assumption of distribution value judgments as independent of the level of total income must be removed in the multi-commodity case. Its removal can be easily accomplished without altering either the major theorems of the paper or its general argument. They are in fact strengthened by the removal of what was perhaps the most restrictive assumption made.