Asymptotic properties of welfare relations

We introduce and discuss notions of efficiency in the aggregation of infinite utility streams. For any utility streams x and y, our efficiency criteria roughly require this: If a utility stream x dominates another utility stream y and if the asymptotic density of the set of coordinates in favor of x is strictly positive, then x is socially preferred to y. As a robustness check of the proposed efficiency axioms we explore the consistency of the axioms with notions of equity. Our main results characterize one period utility domains, i.e., the set of utilities Y attainable by each generation, admitting a social welfare aggregator with the desired properties.