Kircher, Philipp, Ludwig, Sandra and Sandroni, Alvaro (2009) Fairness: a critique to the utilitarian approach. SFB/TR 15 discussion paper. SFB TR 15 / GESY, Bonn, Germany.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
We address a basic diffculty with incorporating fairness into standard utilitarian choice theories. Standard utilitarian theories evaluate lotteries according to the (weighted) utility over final outcomes and assume in particular that a lottery is never preferred over getting the most preferred underlying outcome with ertainty. While nearly universally adopted in economics (including behavioral economics) and appealing for choices among consumption goods, this approach is problematic when choices directly affect the payoffs of other individuals. A difficulty is that randomization may in itself be valued as a desirable procedure for allocating scarce resources. We highlight this in two simple choice settings. Individuals can choose between three options: to get more money; to get less money and someo ther good; to flip a coin between these two alternatives. When the good is a regular consumption good like a coffeemug, hardly any of our subjects randomize. When the good is a social good that yields payoffs directly to some other individual,nearly a third of our subjects choose to randomize. Our results indicate that fairness concerns are conducive to behavioral anomalies that the standard utilitarian model cannot accommodate.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Discussion Paper) |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.sfbtr15.de/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2009 The Authors |
| Divisions: | Economics |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD61 Risk Management |
| JEL classification: | C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C9 - Design of Experiments > C91 - Laboratory, Individual Behavior D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D81 - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Apr 2011 13:45 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Sep 2024 20:13 |
| Funders: | German National Science Foundation (DFG) |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/33806 |
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