Susumu Cato
Biographic Data
| ID | 271867 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susumu Cato |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susumu |
| FAMILY NAME | Cato |
| SIGNATURE | CATO S |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Tokyo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4244-7199 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Do updates of group-level and individual-level information of ethnic minority applicants mitigate statistical discrimination in hiring?
Labor market discrimination against ethnic minority applicants remains persistent despite extensive research and policy interventions. While social scientists have thoroughly examined statistical discrimination—wherein employers rely on group-level information to infer candidates’ future productivity due to limited individual information in resumes—fundamental questions remain unanswered regarding the relative impact of different information type…
Welfarism and continuity in ethical theory: A formal comparison of prospect utilitarianism vs. sufficientarianism
This paper offers a formal analysis of continuity, welfarism, value satiability, lifeboat cases, along with their interconnectedness with sufficientarianism, with particular attention to the recent defences of sufficientarianism by Ben Davies and Lasse Nielsen in response to Hun Chung’s Prospect Utilitarianism (PU). It demonstrates how precise formal definitions help resolve conceptual ambiguities and sharpen philosophical argumentation in distri…
An axiomatic characterization of the proportional threshold methods: A geometric approach
Filters in abstract aggregation with infinite sequences of signals
This study proposes a general framework for aggregation problems, in which agents’ signals given in an infinite sequence are aggregated. Notably, no restriction is imposed on the set of signals; hence, this framework is applicable to any type of attributes, including preferences, ballots, pieces of information, or judgments. The result can include the empty set that corresponds to the silence of the aggregation rule. Our main focus is to analyze …
Multi-species Population Ethics with Critical Levels
This paper explores the notion of species-relative critical levels, which is a crucial ethical issue in multi-species population ethics. First, the formal conditions are provided under which there are species-relative critical levels (e.g., the critical level for human beings is different from that for non-human beings). In particular, we find it a salient question of animal ethics whether the existence of a human being is morally better than tha…
Quasi-transitive and Suzumura consistent rationalizing relations
A Formal Theory of Robert Nozick's Framework for Utopia
This paper offers the very first formal model of Robert Nozick's model of possible worlds and his vision of a utopian society, as outlined in Part III of Anarchy, State, and Utopia . Nozick envisioned utopia as a meta‐utopia —a collection of self‐organized, voluntary sub‐communities—arguing that such an institutional framework is equivalent to the minimal state justified in earlier parts of his book. Nozick's strategy was to define utopia (the be…
What the Demands of Sustainability Can(not) Be
Weak Independence Is Sufficient for Making Weak Superiority Collapse into Strong Superiority
This discussion note establishes a previously overlooked connection between significant results in the literature on Millian superiorities. I demonstrate that weak independence is sufficient for weak superiority to collapse into strong superiority, a result previously assumed to require the stronger axiom of independence. I then argue that this strongly restricts the possibilities of Millian value theory
The structure of critical sets
How Empathy and Partisanship Affected Attitude Changes Following the Assassination of Shinzo Abe: Evidence from Panel Surveys
Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in Japan’s postwar history, was assassinated on July 8, 2022, triggering widespread social reactions and shifts in public opinion. This study investigates the effects of the assassination on attitudes toward Abe using panel data from before and after the assassination. Our results suggest that, overall, attitudes toward Abe significantly improved after the assassination, and that the extent of attitu…
Tsunami-tendenko follows the antiextinction principle, not utilitarianism
This paper examines the concept of ‘tsunami-tendenko,’ a guideline suggesting that individuals prioritise their own safety over aiding others during large-scale disasters. Kodama defends tsunami-tendenko against accusations of egoism by arguing that the principle can be justified ethically on consequentialist (or more precisely, utilitarian) grounds. Kodama asserts that attempting to assist others during such disasters heightens the risk of ‘tomo…
Acyclic population ethics and menu-dependent relations
It has been shown that the Mere Addition Paradox occurs in a choice-functional approach with Path Independence (Stewart R.T., 2021, Path independence and a persistent paradox of population ethics, Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming). The present study is a three-part response to this finding. First, I show that Path Independence is not an essential property leading to this paradox and that logically weaker properties can get the same result. Seco…
Positional conditional egalitarianism
Conditional egalitarianism is a form of egalitarianism that responds to the levelling-down objection by asserting that equality is intrinsically valuable only when it benefits some individuals. Andrew Mason’s original formulation of conditional egalitarianism faces criticism from Nils Holtug, who proposes a refined formulation that introduces a clause regarding the effects of additional benefits on equality. However, Holtug’s own formulation enco…
Timeslice Prioritarianism, Prudence, and Weak Pareto
Andrić and Herlitz (2022) object to Timeslice Prioritarianism on the basis that it violates two purportedly uncontroversial properties: prudence and Weak Pareto. We will claim that their objection does not undermine Timeslice Prioritarianism because the basis of their objection is just a straightforward implication of utilitarianism. To establish this argument, we will show that a timeslice view satisfies prudence and Weak Pareto if and only if i…
Rational Incompetence of Voters
One of the biggest debates on the functioning of democracy concerns voter competence. It is sometimes claimed that voters are incompetent due to unreasonableness and ignorance, which has led some to advocate decision-making by experts—that is, epistocracy. However, in this paper, I show that under certain conditions—namely, asymmetric information signals—reasonable and non-ignorant voters can still be incompetent, even in the absence of misleadin…
Repugnance at the limit
The implications of the repugnant conclusion for consequentialist theories, such as total utilitarianism, have been extensively discussed since the work of Derek Parfit. These discussions make the paradoxes of population ethics depend on welfarist conditions, like the dominance condition (or the Pareto Principle). Thus, one might think that the repugnant conclusion is not a practical problem for deontologists, who deny that we always ought to do …
Sufficientarianism and incommensurability
This paper proposes a sufficientarian theory with an interval of sufficiency levels. I assume that there are upper and lower bounds of sufficiency and that all well-being levels in between can be considered sufficiency levels. This interval reflects the vagueness of the concept of sufficiency. According to the proposed principle, a distribution is morally better than another if and only if, for each threshold within the interval, the headcount of…
Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles
This paper provides an axiomatic analysis of sufficientarian social evaluation. Sufficientarianism has emerged as an increasingly important notion of distributive justice. We propose a class of principles that we label generalized critical-level sufficientarian orderings. The distinguishing feature of our new class is that its members exhibit constant critical levels of well-being that are allowed to differ from the threshold of sufficiency. Our …
Infection control, subjective estimates, and the ethics of testing during the Covid‐19 pandemic
On March 16, 2020, the Director‐General of the World Health Organization said: “We have a simple message to all countries—test, test, test.” This seems like sound advice, but what if limiting the number of tests has a positive effect on infection control? Although this may rarely be the case, the possibility raises an important ethical question that is closely related to a central tension between deontological and consequentialist approaches to e…
Revisiting variable-value population principles
We examine a general class of variable-value population principles. Our particular focus is on the extent to which such principles can avoid the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. We show that if a mild limit property is imposed, avoidance of the repugnant conclusion implies the sadistic conclusion. This result generalizes earlier observations by showing that they apply to a substantially larger class of principles. Our second theorem states tha…
Independent, neutral, and monotonic collective choice: The role of Suzumura consistency
We examine the impact of Suzumura’s (Economica 43:381–390, 1976) consistency property when applied in the context of collective choice rules that are independent of irrelevant alternatives, neutral, and monotonic. An earlier contribution by Blau and Deb (Econometrica 45:871–879, 1977) establishes the existence of a vetoer if the collective relation is required to be complete and acyclical. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities…
Potential rationality in collective decision-making
This study investigates Suzumura consistency as a condition for the rationality of social preferences. A preference is said to be Suzumura-consistent when all preference cycles include only indifference relations. This condition is equivalent to transitivity in the presence of completeness, but, in general, it is substantially weaker than transitivity when preference is incomplete. Notably, Suzumura consistency is especially significant for a pre…
Libertarian approaches to the Covid‐19 pandemic
This study examines the practical implications of libertarian theories of justice in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic. First, we show that the libertarian central value of freedom does not just include economic and political autonomy but also one's right to life. Secondly, we demonstrate that lockdown measures are acceptable to libertarianism if they are appropriately implemented. Nevertheless, in contrast to a utilitarian approach, libertari…
Stable preference aggregation with infinite population
Critical‐level Sufficientarianism
Sufficientarianism is a general class of distributional principles that assign absolute priority to those below a threshold level that represents a minimally acceptable standard of well-being. This topic has received an increasing amount of attention in the recent literature.11 See, for instance, Crisp 2003; Huseby 2010; Shields 2012, 2016. The notion of sufficientarianism can be traced back to Frankfurt who writes that "[w]hat is important from …
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)
Generalized Poverty-gap Orderings
This paper provides a characterization of a new class of ordinal poverty measures that are defined by means of the aggregate generalized poverty gap. To be precise, we propose to use the sum of the differences between the transformed fixed poverty line and the transformed level of income of each person below the line as our measure. If the transformation is strictly concave, the resulting measure is strictly inequality averse with respect to the …
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Iwai Katsuhito published an essay entitled ' On the 21st Century Capitalism ' ( Iwai 2000 ) in which he reconsidered a fundamental feature of market capitalism. As is well known, Milton Friedman and his followers believed that markets and capitalism enhance not only efficiency but also stability (see Friedman 1953 ). However, Iwai claims that the two criteria are not compatible in keeping with the tradition of Knut Wicksell and John Maynard Keyne…
Extending the Intersection Approach
The intersection approach is a common method of overcoming a conflict among multiple values. Under this approach, a state is more desirable than another if it is so for all criteria in question. A fundamental difficulty is that judgment under the intersection approach lacks completeness in too many cases. We propose alternative methods that extend the intersection approach: the union and union-intersection approaches. Our methods generate a (quas…
Incomplete decision-making and Arrow’s impossibility theorem
Remarks on Suzumura consistent collective choice rules
Local strict envy-freeness in large economies
Long-Run Effects of Foreign Penetration on Privatization Policies
This paper investigates the long-run effect of foreign penetration in product markets on privatization policies. We find that the optimal degree of privatization is increasing in foreign penetration. This result is in sharp contrast to the existing short-run result that it is decreasing. Our result suggests that from a long-run viewpoint, the country with a more open market should promote the privatization of public enterprises, even though this …
Long-Run Effects of Tax Policies in a Mixed Market
The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic treatment of tax policies in mixed markets with endogenous entry. We consider three types of tax-subsidy policies: a simple unit subsidy, an entry-license tax, and a policy mixture of the two instruments. Under the unit-subsidy policy, in contrast to the results of the short-run analysis with exogenous entry, the optimal subsidy level in a mixed market is not higher than that in a private marke…
Remarks on Suzumura consistent collective choice rules
Extended anonymity and Paretian relations on infinite utility streams
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Iwai Katsuhito published an essay entitled ' On the 21st Century Capitalism ' ( Iwai 2000 ) in which he reconsidered a fundamental feature of market capitalism. As is well known, Milton Friedman and his followers believed that markets and capitalism enhance not only efficiency but also stability (see Friedman 1953 ). However, Iwai claims that the two criteria are not compatible in keeping with the tradition of Knut Wicksell and John Maynard Keyne…
Incomplete decision-making and Arrow’s impossibility theorem
Entry License Tax: Stackelberg versus Cournot
This study investigates how leadership affects the optimal public policies that impact entry barriers in markets in which the number of firms is endogenously determined. Specifically, we focus on the relationship between the relative efficiency of an incumbent firm and optimal entry tax (entry barrier). We find that this relationship depends on whether the incumbent can commit to its output level before the entries of new firms. The optimal entry…
From the St. Petersburg paradox to the dismal theorem
This paper aims to consider the meaning of the dismal theorem, as presented by Martin Weitzman [(2009) On modeling and interpreting the economics of catastrophic climate change. Review of Economics and Statistics 91 , 1–19]. The theorem states that a standard cost–benefit analysis breaks down if there is a possibility of catastrophes occurring. This result has a significant influence on debates regarding the economics of climate change. In this s…
Quasi-stationary social welfare functions
A Rehabilitation of the Institutional Approach to Japanese Economic History: Introduction to the Special Issue
The following is a short introduction to this special issue, which builds on and significantly extends and updates the research published recently in the Iwanami Series on Japanese economic history. First, we offer a modern interpretation of four institutional elements that are particularly important for understanding the growth path of the Japanese economy. These are (a) ownership; (b) regulation of factor markets; (c) labor mobility and (d) the…
Extending the Intersection Approach
The intersection approach is a common method of overcoming a conflict among multiple values. Under this approach, a state is more desirable than another if it is so for all criteria in question. A fundamental difficulty is that judgment under the intersection approach lacks completeness in too many cases. We propose alternative methods that extend the intersection approach: the union and union-intersection approaches. Our methods generate a (quas…
The bright and dark sides of social media usage during the Covid-19 pandemic: Survey evidence from Japan
Social media infodemics and social distancing under the Covid-19 pandemic: Public good provisions under uncertainty
This debate examines the impact of infodemics - an over-abundance of information - on social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of its external effects, social distancing behavior (SDB) shares fundamental properties with public goods, whose potential for undersupply has been examined extensively in the social sciences. Although the negative effects of infodemics have been emphasized by governments and international organizations, th…
Critical‐level Sufficientarianism
Sufficientarianism is a general class of distributional principles that assign absolute priority to those below a threshold level that represents a minimally acceptable standard of well-being. This topic has received an increasing amount of attention in the recent literature.11 See, for instance, Crisp 2003; Huseby 2010; Shields 2012, 2016. The notion of sufficientarianism can be traced back to Frankfurt who writes that "[w]hat is important from …
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)
Superset-robust collective choice rules
Infinite-population approval voting: A proposal
Libertarian approaches to the Covid‐19 pandemic
This study examines the practical implications of libertarian theories of justice in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic. First, we show that the libertarian central value of freedom does not just include economic and political autonomy but also one's right to life. Secondly, we demonstrate that lockdown measures are acceptable to libertarianism if they are appropriately implemented. Nevertheless, in contrast to a utilitarian approach, libertari…
Stable preference aggregation with infinite population
Mobile health technology as a solution to self-control problems: The behavioral impact of Covid-19 contact tracing apps in Japan
Generalized Poverty-gap Orderings
This paper provides a characterization of a new class of ordinal poverty measures that are defined by means of the aggregate generalized poverty gap. To be precise, we propose to use the sum of the differences between the transformed fixed poverty line and the transformed level of income of each person below the line as our measure. If the transformation is strictly concave, the resulting measure is strictly inequality averse with respect to the …
Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles
This paper provides an axiomatic analysis of sufficientarian social evaluation. Sufficientarianism has emerged as an increasingly important notion of distributive justice. We propose a class of principles that we label generalized critical-level sufficientarian orderings. The distinguishing feature of our new class is that its members exhibit constant critical levels of well-being that are allowed to differ from the threshold of sufficiency. Our …
Infection control, subjective estimates, and the ethics of testing during the Covid‐19 pandemic
On March 16, 2020, the Director‐General of the World Health Organization said: “We have a simple message to all countries—test, test, test.” This seems like sound advice, but what if limiting the number of tests has a positive effect on infection control? Although this may rarely be the case, the possibility raises an important ethical question that is closely related to a central tension between deontological and consequentialist approaches to e…
Revisiting variable-value population principles
We examine a general class of variable-value population principles. Our particular focus is on the extent to which such principles can avoid the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. We show that if a mild limit property is imposed, avoidance of the repugnant conclusion implies the sadistic conclusion. This result generalizes earlier observations by showing that they apply to a substantially larger class of principles. Our second theorem states tha…
Economics (20 works) · Mathematical economics (19 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Mathematics (15 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Game Theory and Voting Systems (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Axiom (10 works) · Political science (10 works)