Theoretical Economics 13 (2018), 467–484

We provide an axiomatic justification to aggregate money metrics. The key axiom requires the approval of richer-to-poorer transfers that preserve the overall efficiency of the distribution. This transfer principle, together with the basic axioms anonymity, continuity, monotonicity, and a version of welfarism, characterizes a standard social welfare function defined over money metric utilities.

Keywords: Money metric utility, transfer principle, efficiency

JEL classification: D61, D63, D71, I31