Piercing the Veil of Ignorance∗
نویسندگان
چکیده
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 thought experiment, the main result of this paper is that (under certain assumptions) preferences — hence choices — behind the veil of ignorance are determined by preferences in front of the veil of ignorance. This linkage between preferences behind and in front of the veil of ignorance has implications for distributive theories of justice and for theories of choice. ∗We are grateful to Raymond Fisman, Douglas Gale and Daniel Markovitz for helpful conversations, and to seminar audiences at Bocconi, Brown, Caltech, Columbia, EUI, NYU, Oxford, Rice, UC Berkeley, UCL and UT Austin for many useful and encouraging comments. Financial support was provided by the National Science Foundation under grants SES-0317752, SES-0518936 and SES 0617027, by the UC Berkeley and UCLA Academic Senate Committees on Research, and by the Coleman Fung Risk Management Research Center (OpenLink Fund) at UC Berkeley. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency. †Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 508-1 Evans Hall # 3880, Berkeley, CA 94720 (E-mail: [email protected], URL: www.econ.berkeley.edu/~kariv/). ‡Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (E-mail: [email protected], URL: www.econ.ucla.edu/zame/).
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 کاملIs China Creating A New Business Order? Rationalizing China's Extraterritorial Attempt to Expand the Veil-Piercing Doctrine
Countries are increasingly using tax policy as an instrument to navigate through the recent global financial difficulties, and China is no exception. In an effort to avoid the loss of tax revenue resulting from the utilization of foreign holding companies, the Chinese tax authority issued Circular 698 granting itself the authority to tax transactions between foreign entities taking place outsid...
متن کاملImpartiality 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 کاملIs 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