IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jrp/jrpwrp/2010-040.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Whose impartiality? An experimental study of veiled stakeholders, impartial spectators and ideal observers

Author

Listed:
  • Fernando Aguiar

    (Spanish Council for Scientific Research (IESA-CSIC))

  • Alice Becker

    (Max Planck Institute for Economics, Jena)

  • Luis Miller

    (Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Sciences, University of Oxford)

Abstract

This article defines in a precise manner three different mechanisms to achieve impartiality in distributive justice and studies them experimentally. We consider a first-person procedure, the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, and two third-party procedures, the impartial spectator and the ideal observer. As a result, we find striking differences in the chosen outcome distributions by the three methods. Ideal observers that do not have a stake in the allocation problem nor information about their position in society propose significantly more egalitarian distributions than veiled stakeholders or impartial spectators. Risk preferences seem to explain why participants that have a stake in the final allocation propose less egalitarian distributions. Impartial spectators that are informed about their position in society tend to favor stakeholders holding the same position.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernando Aguiar & Alice Becker & Luis Miller, 2010. "Whose impartiality? An experimental study of veiled stakeholders, impartial spectators and ideal observers," Jena Economics Research Papers 2010-040, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    • Handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2010/wp_2010_040.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Elena Cettolin & Arno Riedl, 2017. "Justice Under Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3739-3759, November.
    2. Mollerstrom, Johanna & Reme, Bjørn-Atle & Sørensen, Erik Ø., 2015. "Luck, choice and responsibility — An experimental study of fairness views," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 33-40.
    3. Müller Daniel & Sander Renes, 2019. "Fairness Views and Political Preferences - Evidence from a representative sample," Working Papers 2019-08, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    impartiality; veil of ignorance; impartial spectator; distributive justice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-040. 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: Markus Pasche (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jenecon.de .

    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.