The veil of public ignorance

نویسنده

  • Klaus Nehring
چکیده

A theory of cooperative choice under incomplete information is developed in which agents possess private information at the time of contracting. It is assumed that the group of cooperating agents has agreed on a utilitarian “standard of evaluation” (group preference ordering) governing choices under complete information. The task is to extend this standard to choices whose consequences depend on the agents’ private information. It is accomplished by formulating appropriate axioms of Bayesian coherence at the group level. Assuming the existence of a common prior, the first main result generalizes Harsanyi’s (1955) classical characterization of utilitarian preference aggregation to incomplete information. The second main result shows that Bayesian coherence of group preferences is compatible with Interim Pareto Dominance only if a common prior exists. This generalizes and corrects the classical literature on consistent Bayesian preference aggregation under complete information: allowing for incompleteness of information, consistent Bayesian aggregation turns out to be possible even if agents’ beliefs differ, as long as differences in beliefs can be attributed to differences in information.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Impartiality and Priority . Part 1 : the Veil of Ignorance

The veil of ignorance has been used often as a tool for recommending what justice requires with respect to the distribution of wealth. We complete Harsanyi’s model of the veil of ignorance by appending information permitting interpersonal comparability of welfare. We show that the veil-of-ignorance conception of John Harsanyi, so completed, and Ronald Dworkin’s, when modeled formally, recommend...

متن کامل

Impartiality and Priority. Part 1: the Veil of Ignorance * Ternero's Research Was Made Possible Thanks to a Post-doctoral Grant for Advancement of Research Staff from the Generalitat Valenciana

The veil of ignorance has been used often as a tool for recommending what justice requires with respect to the distribution of wealth. We complete Harsanyi’s model of the veil of ignorance by appending information permitting interpersonal comparability of welfare. We show that the veil-of-ignorance conception of John Harsanyi, so completed, and Ronald Dworkin’s, when modeled formally, recommend...

متن کامل

Is the Veil of Ignorance Transparent ?

— Theories of justice in the spirit of Rawls and Harsanyi argue that fair-minded people should aspire to make choices for society as if in the original position, that is, behind a veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing their own social positions. In this paper, we provide a fairly simple framework showing that preferences in front of the veil of ignorance (i.e., in face of everyday r...

متن کامل

Piercing the Veil of Ignorance∗

Theories of justice in the spirit of Harsanyi and Rawls argue that fair-minded people should aspire to make choices for society — that is, for themselves and for others — as if in the original position, behind a veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing their own social and economic positions in society. While the original position is a purely hypothetical situation, developed as a thou...

متن کامل

Pathways across the valley of death: novel intellectual property strategies for accelerated drug discovery.

A. THE THRESHOLD QUESTION OF OVERLAP................................................................ 73 B. A TWO-TIERED REGIME........................................................................................... 74 1. TIER 1: BEHIND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE ............................................................ 74 2. TIER 2: BEYOND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE....................................

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • J. Economic Theory

دوره 119  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2004