Evaluating risky prospects: the distribution view

Bovens, Luc (2015) Evaluating risky prospects: the distribution view. Analysis, 75 (2). pp. 243-253. ISSN 0003-2638

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Abstract

Risky prospects represent policies that impose different types of risks on multiple people. I present an example from food safety. A utilitarian following Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem ranks such prospects according to their mean expected utility or the expectation of the social utility. Such a ranking is not sensitive to any of four types of distributional concerns. I develop a model that lets the policy analyst rank prospects relative to the distributional concerns that she considers fitting in the context at hand. I name this model ‘the Distribution View’ posing an alternative to Parfit's Priority View for risky prospects

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://analysis.oxfordjournals.org/
Additional Information:	© 2015 The Author
Library of Congress subject classification:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Sets:	Departments > Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Funders:	Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (SCAS)
Date Deposited:	16 Dec 2013 11:01
URL:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/54924/

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