IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/eme/reinzz/s1049-2585(04)11005-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Social Welfare, The Veil Of Ignorance And Purely Individual Risk: An Empirical Examination

In: Inequality, Welfare and Income Distribution: Experimental Approaches

Author

Listed:
  • Kristof Bosmans
  • Erik Schokkaert

Abstract

We present the results of a questionnaire study with Belgian undergraduate students as respondents. We consider the relationship between people’s direct ethical preferences, their preferences behind a veil of ignorance, and their purely individual risk preferences over income distributions. The results reveal that, although there are important similarities between the three types of preferences, the first and third types form two extremes, while the second type lies in between the other two. Consistency of response patterns with the expected utility (EU) and rank-dependent expected utility (RDEU) models – natural analogues of the social welfare functions most frequently used in the literature on inequality and social welfare – is tested as well. For all three types of preferences the results reveal that, in the considered context, the RDEU model does not add explanatory power to the EU model. However, preferences appear to be relatively well described by some of the basic concepts from non-expected utility theory not usually considered in the income distribution literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristof Bosmans & Erik Schokkaert, 2004. "Social Welfare, The Veil Of Ignorance And Purely Individual Risk: An Empirical Examination," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality, Welfare and Income Distribution: Experimental Approaches, pages 85-114, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:reinzz:s1049-2585(04)11005-3
    DOI: 10.1016/S1049-2585(04)11005-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1016/S1049-2585(04)11005-3/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1016/S1049-2585(04)11005-3/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/S1049-2585(04)11005-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Arthur E. Attema & Olivier L’Haridon & Gijs Kuilen, 2023. "An experimental investigation of social risk preferences for health," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 95(3), pages 379-403, October.
    2. Miqdad Asaria & Joan Costa-Font & Frank Cowell, 2023. "How does exposure to COVID-19 influence health and income inequality aversion?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 61(3), pages 625-647, October.
    3. Joan Costa-Font & Frank Cowell & Joan Costa-i-Font, 2024. "Specific Egalitarianism? Inequality Aversion across Domains," CESifo Working Paper Series 11261, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:eme:reinzz:s1049-2585(04)11005-3. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.