Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cesptp/halshs-00469112.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is the Veil of Ignorance Transparent ?

Author

Listed:
  • Gaël Giraud

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

  • Cécile Renouard

    (PhD Program - ESSEC Business School)

Abstract
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 society. In this paper, we provide a framework showing that preferences in front of the veil of ignorance (i.e., in face of everyday risky situations) are entirely determined by ethical preferences behind the veil. Moreover, by contrast with Kariv & Zame (2008), in many cases of interest, the converse is not true : ethical decisions cannot be deduced from economic ones. This not only rehabilitates distributive theories of justice but even proves that standard decision theory in economic environments cannot be separated from ethical questioning.

Suggested Citation

  • Gaël Giraud & Cécile Renouard, 2010. "Is the Veil of Ignorance Transparent ?," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00469112, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00469112
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00469112
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00469112/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clark, Andrew E. & Oswald, Andrew J., 1996. "Satisfaction and comparison income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 359-381, September.
    2. Naiditch, Claire & Vranceanu, Radu, 2011. "Remittances as a social status signaling device," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(4), pages 305-318, December.
    3. Baroni, Michel & Barthélémy, Fabrice & Mokrane, Mahdi, 2005. "A PCA Factor Repeat Sales Index (1973-2001) To Forecast Apartment Prices in Paris (France)," ESSEC Working Papers DR 05002, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    4. John C. Harsanyi, 1953. "Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(5), pages 434-434.
    5. Philippe Artzner & Freddy Delbaen & Jean‐Marc Eber & David Heath, 1999. "Coherent Measures of Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 203-228, July.
    6. Amrita Dhillon & Jean-Francois Mertens, 1999. "Relative Utilitarianism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(3), pages 471-498, May.
    7. Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah, 2010. "Is the veil of ignorance only a concept about risk? An experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 1062-1066, December.
    8. Stefano Demichelis & Jorgen W. Weibull, 2008. "Language, Meaning, and Games: A Model of Communication, Coordination, and Evolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1292-1311, September.
    9. Freeman, R. Edward, 1994. "The Politics of Stakeholder Theory: Some Future Directions1," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(4), pages 409-421, October.
    10. Uzi Segal, 2000. "Let's Agree That All Dictatorships Are Equally Bad," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 569-589, June.
    11. Fehr, Ernst & Schmidt, Klaus M., 2006. "The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism - Experimental Evidence and New Theories," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 615-691, Elsevier.
    12. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. İbrahim Erdem SEÇİLMİŞ, 2014. "Seniority: A Blessing or A Curse? The Effect of Economics Training on the Perception of Distributive Justice," Sosyoekonomi Journal, Sosyoekonomi Society, issue 22(22).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Omer F. Baris, 2018. "Timing effect in bargaining and ex ante efficiency of the relative utilitarian solution," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(4), pages 547-556, June.
    2. Florian Brandl, 2020. "Belief-Averaged Relative Utilitarianism," Papers 2005.03693, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    3. Marcus Pivato, 2009. "Twofold optimality of the relative utilitarian bargaining solution," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 32(1), pages 79-92, January.
    4. Segal, Uzi & Sobel, Joel, 2002. "Min, Max, and Sum," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 126-150, September.
    5. Ma, Sinong & Safra, Zvi, 2016. "Fairness and Utilitarianism without Independence," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 20, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    6. Nehring, Klaus, 2004. "The veil of public ignorance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 247-270, December.
    7. Juan Moreno-Ternero & John E. Roemer, 2004. "Impartiality and Priority. Part 1: The Veil of Ignorance," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1477A, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised May 2005.
    8. Thibault Gajdos & Feriel Kandil, 2008. "The ignorant observer," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 193-232, August.
    9. Brandl, Florian, 2021. "Belief-averaging and relative utilitarianism," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    10. Pivato, Marcus, 2007. "A non-monetary form of Clarke pivotal voting," MPRA Paper 3964, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. David Heyd & Uzi Segal, 2006. "Democratically Elected Aristocracies," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 27(1), pages 103-127, August.
    12. Amarante, Massimiliano & Ghossoub, Mario, 2021. "Aggregation of opinions and risk measures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    13. Sinong Ma & Zvi Safra, 2019. "Fairness and utilitarianism without independence," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(1), pages 29-52, February.
    14. Schumacher Johannes M., 2018. "Distortion risk measures, ROC curves, and distortion divergence," Statistics & Risk Modeling, De Gruyter, vol. 35(1-2), pages 35-50, January.
    15. Qian Lin & Frank Riedel, 2021. "Optimal consumption and portfolio choice with ambiguous interest rates and volatility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(3), pages 1189-1202, April.
    16. Ehud Lehrer, 2009. "A new integral for capacities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 39(1), pages 157-176, April.
    17. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2017. "Fair management of social risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 666-706.
    18. Rose-Anne Dana & Cuong Le Van, 2009. "No-arbitrage, overlapping sets of priors and the existence of efficient allocations and equilibria in the presence of risk and ambiguity," Post-Print halshs-00281582, HAL.
    19. Nendel, Max & Streicher, Jan, 2023. "An axiomatic approach to default risk and model uncertainty in rating systems," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    20. Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah, 2010. "Is the veil of ignorance only a concept about risk? An experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 1062-1066, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00469112. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.