5 research outputs found
Adaptive Preferences, Self-expression and Preference-based Freedom Rankings
If preference-based freedom rankings are based on all-things-considered preferences, they risk judging phenomena of adaptive preferences as freedom enhancing. As a remedy, it has been suggested to base preference-based freedom rankings on reasonable preferences. But this approach is also problematic. This article argues that the quest for a remedy is unnecessary. All-things-considered preferences retain information on whether the availability of an option contributes to the value that freedom has for a person’s self-expression. If preference-based freedom rankings use all-things-considered preferences to evaluate whether an option contributes to a person’s self-expression, they are immune to the problem posed by adaptive preferences
Essays on freedom of choice and capabilities
A presente tese desenvolve trĂŞs ensaios que abordam diferentes temas relacionados Ă liberdade de escolha. No primeiro ensaio, propomos uma regra para ranquear conjuntos de oportunidades conforme a liberdade de escolha que eles propiciam, e que leva consideração as meta-preferĂŞncias dos indivĂduos. Desenvolvendo um abordagem teorica, investigamos se, ao considerarmos indivĂduos com mĂşltiplos objetivos, algumas noções usuais acerca liberdade que foram propostas na literatura sĂŁo modificadas. Os resultados mostram que a regra proposta viola o axioma da monotonicidade, e que indivĂduos podem atribuir maior liberdade de escolha a conjuntos com menos opções. No segundo ensaio, propomos um experimento online baseado em analise conjunta para avaliar como a liberdade de escolha dos indivĂduos Ă© afetada pelas caracterĂsticas dos menus que os agentes dispõem no momento de realizar escolhas. Estudamos o efeito de trĂŞs bases informacionais propostas na literatura – a cardinalidade dos conjuntos, a diversidade das opções, e a qualidade dessas opções – e tambĂ©m investigamos se normas de comportamento social podem influenciar a liberdade de escolha dos agentes. Usando estimadores de diferenças em medias operacionalizados atravĂ©s de uma Ăşnica regressĂŁo linear, os resultados sugerem que nĂŁo apenas os elementos tradicionais como a cardinalidade, diversidade, e preferĂŞncias, sĂŁo fundamentais para entender liberdade de escolha, como tambĂ©m normas de comportamento social tem impacto significativo. Finalmente, no terceiro ensaio, investigamos como indivĂduos realizam trade-offs entre diferentes dimensões de suas vidas quando consideram os seus potenciais para atingir melhores nĂveis de bem-estar. )Continua) Realizando um novo experimento baseado em análise conjunta, estudamos seis dimensões da vida dos indivĂduos que sĂŁo considerados centrais pela abordagem das capacitações, e avaliamos como diferentes circunstâncias em cada uma dessas dimensões afeta a liberdade de bem-estar dos indivĂduos. Os resultados mostram que as dimensões relacionadas a segurança domĂ©stica e a boas acomodações sĂŁo de grande relevância, e, portanto, os formuladores de polĂticas publicas podem encontrar espaço para o estabelecimento de prioridades. Usando um modelo hierárquico Bayesiano, tambĂ©m investigamos se a importância que os participantes dĂŁo Ă s dimensões estudadas varia conforme o nĂvel de bem-estar que eles reportaram no estudo, e tambĂ©m se varia conforme a situação de vida em cada uma dessas seis dimensões. Os resultados sugerem que indivĂduos que indicam menor bem-estar atribuem menor importância para a dimensĂŁo da vida relativa ao amor dos familiares prĂłximos se comparado a outros participantes com maior nĂvel de bem-estar subjetivo. TambĂ©m, os participantes que indicaram ter sofrido alguma forma de violĂŞncia domĂ©stica no passado veem de forma menos negativa a ausĂŞncia de uma boa condição de segurança domĂ©stica, se comparado aos indivĂduos que nunca sofreram com esse tipo de violĂŞncia.This thesis presents three essays that approach different topics related to freedom of choice. In the first essay, we propose a rule to rank opportunity sets in terms of freedom of choice that considers information about individuals meta-preferences. From a theoretical perspective, we investigate whether accounting for a person’s multiple goals and objectives changes some common notions about freedom of choice that have been proposed by the literature. We show that our rule fails to respect the monotonicity axiom, and that individuals might experience greater freedom when some options are excluded from their initial opportunity sets. In the second essay, we propose an online conjoint experiment to evaluate how individuals’ freedom of choice is affected by the characteristics of the menus they have at their disposal at the moment of choice. We study the effect of traditional informational basis used to evaluate freedom of choice – sets’ cardinalities, the diversity, and the quality of their options – and also investigate whether social norms of behavior have some bearing on freedom. Using a difference-in-means estimator that is operationalized through a single linear regression, our results suggest that not only traditional elements such as cardinality, diversity, and preferences are key to understand freedom, but also that social norms of behavior have a significant impact. Finally, in our third essay, we investigate how trade-offs between capabilities take place when individuals consider their ability to achieve higher well-being. Using another conjoint experiment, we study six life domains that are considered as central by the capability approach, evaluating how varying the situation of individuals in each of these domains affect their well-being freedom. Our results show that being secure from domestic violence and enjoying a decent shelter have great relevance, and hence policymakers might find room for establishing priorities. Using a hierarchical Bayesian model, we also investigate whether the relative importance that people give to these life domains vary with participants’ subjective well-being, and with participants’ self-reported situations in each of the life domains studied. We find that subjects that reported lower well-being attached less importance to enjoying the love and care of their families as compared to those participants with higher subjective well-being. Moreover, respondents that reported to have suffered from some sort of domestic violence find less harmful the lack of a decent level of bodily security, as compared to those participants that have never suffered from such type of assault
Measuring Freedom in Games
Behind the veil of ignorance, a policy maker ranks combinations of game forms and information about how players interact within the game forms. The paper presents axioms on the preferences of the policy maker that are necessary and sufficient for the policy maker's preferences to be represented by the sum of an expected valuation and a freedom measure. The freedom measure is the mutual information between players' strategies and the players' outcomes of the game, capturing the degree to which players control their outcomes. The measure extends several measures from the opportunity set based freedom literature to situations where agents interact. This allows freedom to be measured in general economic models and thus derive policy recommendations based on the freedom instead of the welfare of agents. To illustrate the measure and axioms, applications to civil liberties and optimal taxation are provided