A proposal to unify some concepts in the theory of fairness

So far, the Theory of Distributive Justice has tried to single out a unique criterion of Justice. In our opinion, we live in a world in which different people hold conflicting ideas about justice. We propose a procedure for representing these individual opinions, by means of what we call ``aspiration functions'', and we present in this paper three different ways of aggregating such opposing opinions into a socially acceptable judgement. Furthermore, we show that many well-known concepts are special cases of our approach. We study, under a restriction on the form of the aspiration functions, the conditions that are necessary and sufficient for a social choice correspondence to be generated from any of our concepts.Distributive justice, fairness

Two Paradigms of Jurisdiction

Globalization causes convergence of legal orders. Or so it is argued. Law and economics scholars predict that legal orders will move towards the same efficient end state. They argue that the requirements of globalization will pressure legal orders to converge on the level of economic efficiency, because regulatory competition between legal orders makes it impossible for individual legal systems to maintain suboptimal solutions. Many comparative lawyers predict a similar convergence. In particular traditional functionalist comparatists have long held that unification of law was both desirable and unavoidable. Their basic argument is based on functional equivalence and can be summarized as follows: legal systems may look different because they have different doctrines and institutions; these differences, however, are only superficial, because the institutions fulfill the same functions and are therefore actually similar. Realizing that legal orders are already similar in substance should make it easy to unify the law formally as well

PRAVEDNOST I POTICAJI U DRUŠTVIMA ZASNOVANIMA NA RODBINSKIM VEZAMA

This paper mainly discusses the effects of fairness on incentives in relation-based societies (e.g., China) through the principal-agent framework. Our analyses give the conditions under which the consideration of fairness will decrease or increase the agent’s efficiency wage. At the same time, our analyses give the conditions under which taking into account fairness will make the principal’s constraint to incentivize the agent easier or harder to be satisfied. In a word, this paper finds that the incentive effects of fairness are condition-dependent, and that moral hazard problems are more subtle and difficult to be tackled when fairness is taken into account.Rad uglavnom razmatra učinke pravednosti na poticaje u društvima zasnovanima na rodbinskim vezama (npr. Kina) u okviru odnosa principala i agenta. Naše analize prezentiraju uvjete pod kojima će razmatranje pravednosti smanjiti ili povećati agentovu stimulativnu nadnicu. Istovremeno, istraživanje prezentira uvjete pod kojima će uzimanje pravednosti u obzir otežati ili olakšati zadovoljavanje principalovih ograničenja pri poticanju agenta. Jednom rječju, ovaj rad pokazuje da poticajni učinci pravednosti ovise o okolnostima a da moralni problemi postaju istančaniji i teže rješivi kad se pravednost uzme u obzir

What’s wrong with the minimal conception of innateness in cognitive science?

One of the classic debates in cognitive science is between nativism and empiricism about the development of psychological capacities. In principle, the debate is empirical. However, in practice nativist hypotheses have also been challenged for relying on an ill-defined, or even unscientific, notion of innateness as that which is “not learned”. Here this minimal conception of innateness is defended on four fronts. First, it is argued that the minimal conception is crucial to understanding the nativism-empiricism debate, when properly construed; Second, various objections to the minimal conception—that it risks overgeneralization, lacks an account of learning, frustrates genuine explanations of psychological development, and fails to unify different notions of innateness across the sciences—are rebutted. Third, it is argued that the minimal conception avoids the shortcomings of primitivism, the prominent view that innate capacities are those that are not acquired via a psychological process in development. And fourth, the minimal conception undermines some attempts to identify innateness with a natural kind. So in short, we have little reason to reject, and good reason to accept, the minimal conception of innateness in cognitive science

Interpretation Rules and Good Faith as Obstacles to the UK\u27s Ratification of the CISG and to the Harmonization of Contract Law in Europe

This essay examines Article 7 of the CISG, the provision on the Convention’s interpretation, through the lenses of both German and English law in order to shed light on interpretative issues in which there are divergent views in common law and civil law systems. The essay further provides possible reasons for the non-ratification of the CISG by the UK in contrast to its broad acceptance in Germany. The author more closely examines the issue of good faith as a principle of contract law, its vagueness being one of the possible reasons for the reluctance to ratify the CISG in England. The essay will conclude with an outlook on current and future efforts to harmonize contract law in Europe, notably with regards to the new (Draft) Common Frame of Reference. The question raised is whether the Common Frame of Reference has a chance of being accepted by the European civil law countries as well as by England and Wales as common law jurisdictions

Fairness under Uncertainty with Indivisibilities

I analyze an economy with uncertainty in which a set of indivisible objects and a certain amount of money is to be distributed among agents. The set of intertemporally fair social choice functions based on envy-freeness and Pareto efficiency is characterized. I give a necessary and sufficient condition for its non-emptiness and propose a mechanism that implements the set of intertemporally fair allocations in Bayes-Nash equilibrium. Implementation at the ex ante stage is considered, too. I also generalize the existence result obtained with envy-freeness using a broader fairness concept, introducing the aspiration function.aspiration function, envy-free social choice function, fairness, implementation, indivisible goods, uncertainty

Counterfactuals and Explanatory Pluralism

Recent literature on non-causal explanation raises the question as to whether explanatory monism, the thesis that all explanations submit to the same analysis, is true. The leading monist proposal holds that all explanations support change-relating counterfactuals. We provide several objections to this monist position. 1Introduction2Change-Relating Monism's Three Problems3Dependency and Monism: Unhappy Together4Another Challenge: Counterfactual Incidentalism4.1High-grade necessity4.2Unity in diversity5Conclusio

Criteria for assessing grant applications: A systematic review

Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known about the criteria peers use in assessing grant applications. In this systematic review we therefore identify and synthesize studies that examine grant peer review criteria in an empirical and inductive manner. To facilitate the synthesis, we introduce a framework that classifies what is generally referred to as 'criterion' into an evaluated entity (i.e. the object of evaluation) and an evaluation criterion (i.e. the dimension along which an entity is evaluated). In total, this synthesis includes 12 studies. Two-thirds of these studies examine criteria in the medical and health sciences, while studies in other fields are scarce. Few studies compare criteria across different fields, and none focus on criteria for interdisciplinary research. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of the 12 studies and thereby identified 15 evaluation criteria and 30 evaluated entities as well as the relations between them. Based on a network analysis, we propose a conceptualization that groups the identified evaluation criteria and evaluated entities into aims, means, and outcomes. We compare our results to criteria found in studies on research quality and guidelines of funding agencies. Since peer review is often approached from a normative perspective, we discuss our findings in relation to two normative positions, the fairness doctrine and the ideal of impartiality. Our findings suggest that future studies on criteria in grant peer review should focus on the applicant, include data from non-Western countries, and examine fields other than the medical and health sciences.Comment: Final versio

Where do electronic markets come from? Regulation and the transformation of financial exchanges

The practices of high-frequency trading (HFT) are dependent on automated financial markets, especially those produced by securities exchanges electronically interconnected with competing exchanges. How did this infrastructural and organizational state of affairs come to be? Employing the conceptual distinction between fixed-role and switch-role markets, we analyse the discourse surrounding the design and eventual approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation of Exchanges and Alternative Trading Systems (Reg ATS). We find that the disruption of the exchange industry at the hands of automated markets was produced through an interweaving of both technological and political change. This processual redefinition of the ‘exchange’, in addition, may provide a suggestive precedent for understanding contemporary regulatory crises generated by other digital marketplace platforms