In order to account for non-traditional preference relations the present paper develops a new, richer framework for preference relations. This new framework provides characterizations of non-traditional preference relations, such as incommensurateness and instability, that may hold when neither preference nor indifference do. The new framework models relations with swaps, which are conceived of as transfers from one alternative state to another. The traditional framework analyses dyadic preference relations in terms of a hypothetical choice between the two compared alternatives. The swap framework extends this approach by analysing dyadic preference relations in terms of two hypothetical choices: the choice between keeping the first of the compared alternatives or swapping it for the second; and the choice between keeping the second alternative or swapping it for the first.

The seminal contribution of Sen (1976) led to a new way to conceptualize and measure absolute poverty, by arguing for the need to ‘take note of the inequality among the poor’ (Sen 1976: 227). Since then, the ‘Inequality’ of poverty has become the third ‘I’ of poverty, which together with the ‘Incidence’ and the ‘Intensity’ of it constitute the dimensions deemed relevant for poverty evaluation. In this paper, we first argue that the interest in the third ‘I’ of poverty actually originates from a prioritarian (Parfit 1995) rather than an egalitarian attitude. Further, we illustrate the inability of the three ‘I's to fully comprise the criteria for the assessment of poverty which are de facto adopted by existing poverty indices. Some of them resolve distributional conflicts by following leximin, hence assigning a pivotal role to the worst off. We question the desirability of leximin, and conclude that giving absolute priority to the worst off is plausible only in cases where the latter has been identified by an exogenous threshold demarcating a significant difference in human suffering. Finally, we explore to what extent prioritarianism and the sufficiency argument of Frankfurt (1987), Crisp (2003) and Casal (2007) can help conceptualize giving absolute priority to individuals or groups indentified by exogenous (poverty and ultra-poverty) thresholds.

The classical theory of rational choice is built on several important internal consistency conditions. In recent years, the reasonableness of those internal consistency conditions has been questioned and criticized, and several responses to accommodate such criticisms have been proposed in the literature. This paper develops a general framework to accommodate the issues raised by the criticisms of classical rational choice theory, and examines the broad impact of these criticisms from both normative and positive points of view.

A standard formulation of luck-egalitarianism says that ‘it is [in itself] bad – unjust and unfair – for some to be worse off than others [through no fault or choice of their own]’, where ‘fault or choice’ means substantive responsibility-generating fault or choice. This formulation is ambiguous: one ambiguity concerns the possible existence of a gap between what is true of each worse-off individual and what is true of the group of worse-off individuals, fault or choice-wise, the other concerns the notion of fault. I show that certain ways of resolving these ambiguities lead to counterintuitive results; and that the most plausible way of resolving them leads to a theory of distributive justice in which responsibility plays a role significantly different from that in standard luck-egalitarian thinking. My main conclusion here is that luck-egalitarianism is best formulated as the view that it is [in itself] bad – unjust and unfair – for an individual to be worse off than others if, and only if, her being worse off does not fit the degree to which she is at fault in a not purely prudential sense.