What Makes Discrimination Wrong?

Most of us intuitively take discrimination based on gender or ethnicity to be impermissible because we have a right to be treated on the basis of merit and capacity rather than e.g. ethnicity or gender. I call this suggestion the Impermissibility Account. I argue that, despite how the Impermissibility Account seems intuitive to most of us with a humanist outlook, it is indefensible. I show that well-informed discrimination can sometimes be permissible, and even morally required, meaning we cannot have a strict right not to be discriminated against. I then propose an alternative and more plausible account which I call the Fairness and Externalities Account, arguing that acts of discrimination are wrong partly because they are unfair and partly because they create harmful externalities which—analogously to pollution—there is a collective responsibility to minimize. Both of these factors are however defeasible, meaning that if the Fairness and Externalities Account is correct, then discrimination is sometimes permissible. These results are counterintuitive, and suggest that the ethics of discrimination requires further attention

Steady Marginality: A Uniform Approach to Shapley Value for Games with Externalities

The Shapley value is one of the most important solution concepts in cooperative game theory. In coalitional games without externalities, it allows to compute a unique payoff division that meets certain desirable fairness axioms. However, in many realistic applications where externalities are present, Shapley's axioms fail to indicate such a unique division. Consequently, there are many extensions of Shapley value to the environment with externalities proposed in the literature built upon additional axioms. Two important such extensions are "externality-free" value by Pham Do and Norde and value that "absorbed all externalities" by McQuillin. They are good reference points in a space of potential payoff divisions for coalitional games with externalities as they limit the space at two opposite extremes. In a recent, important publication, De Clippel and Serrano presented a marginality-based axiomatization of the value by Pham Do Norde. In this paper, we propose a dual approach to marginality which allows us to derive the value of McQuillin. Thus, we close the picture outlined by De Clippel and Serrano

Institutional Embeddedness of Local Willingness to Pay for Environmental Services: Evidence From Matiguás, Nicaragua

The concept of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) has gained increasing popularity in the conservation literature as it offers the potential to reconcile opposing social and ecological objectives by paying land owners for the positive environmental externalities they generate on their land. Based on extensive fieldwork in Matiguás, Nicaragua, this paper aims to complement the literature on locally-financed PES schemes in agricultural watersheds. Using both qualitative and quantitative research approaches, it inquires into the under-researched demand-side potential by assessing local willingness to pay (WTP) for water and watershed services in an upstream-downstream setting. Our results show a significant WTP for improved water services and a clear local consciousness about upstream-downstream interdependencies, suggesting potential for a ‘Coasean’ water-related PES scheme. Contrary to expectations, the feasibility of such a locally-financed PES system is however undermined by prevailing local perceptions of agricultural externalities and entitlements, questioning the fairness of such payments. Also low levels of mutual trust seem to undermine the credibility of the PES framework. The viability and acceptance of locally-financed PES mechanisms will thus also depend on the prior social production of cognitive synergies and improved collective action.Payments for Environmental Services; Watershed; Willingness to pay; Fairness; Externalities; Institutions

POTs: Protective Optimization Technologies

Algorithmic fairness aims to address the economic, moral, social, and political impact that digital systems have on populations through solutions that can be applied by service providers. Fairness frameworks do so, in part, by mapping these problems to a narrow definition and assuming the service providers can be trusted to deploy countermeasures. Not surprisingly, these decisions limit fairness frameworks' ability to capture a variety of harms caused by systems. We characterize fairness limitations using concepts from requirements engineering and from social sciences. We show that the focus on algorithms' inputs and outputs misses harms that arise from systems interacting with the world; that the focus on bias and discrimination omits broader harms on populations and their environments; and that relying on service providers excludes scenarios where they are not cooperative or intentionally adversarial. We propose Protective Optimization Technologies (POTs). POTs provide means for affected parties to address the negative impacts of systems in the environment, expanding avenues for political contestation. POTs intervene from outside the system, do not require service providers to cooperate, and can serve to correct, shift, or expose harms that systems impose on populations and their environments. We illustrate the potential and limitations of POTs in two case studies: countering road congestion caused by traffic-beating applications, and recalibrating credit scoring for loan applicants.Comment: Appears in Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* 2020). Bogdan Kulynych and Rebekah Overdorf contributed equally to this work. Version v1/v2 by Seda G\"urses, Rebekah Overdorf, and Ero Balsa was presented at HotPETS 2018 and at PiMLAI 201

Sub-channel Assignment, Power Allocation and User Scheduling for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Networks

In this paper, we study the resource allocation and user scheduling problem for a downlink nonorthogonal multiple access network where the base station allocates spectrum and power resources to a set of users. We aim to jointly optimize the sub-channel assignment and power allocation to maximize the weighted total sum-rate while taking into account user fairness. We formulate the sub-channel allocation problem as equivalent to a many-to-many two-sided user-subchannel matching game in which the set of users and sub-channels are considered as two sets of players pursuing their own interests. We then propose a matching algorithm which converges to a two-side exchange stable matching after a limited number of iterations. A joint solution is thus provided to solve the sub-channel assignment and power allocation problems iteratively. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm greatly outperforms the orthogonal multiple access scheme and a previous non-orthogonal multiple access scheme.Comment: Accepted as a regular paper by IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Collapsing Corporate Structures: Resolving the Tension Between Form and Substance

Opus Alchemicum explores the fabrication of “reality” upon imagination, and the affective relation between ideas and matter in the built environment. Like an alchemic experiment, through the manipulation of real facts and their transformation into myth, stories, rituals and objects, the project tries to demonstrate how myths are not just produced but also produce “real” by creating a collective understanding and a pattern of relations, roles and ideas. This project’s attempt is to reveal the mechanisms of reality in an act of analogy. The role of architecture, buildings and objects is investigated in its transfigured correspondent. Myths are both constructed and revealed as the language code of a discourse. The result is a work of alchemy, a product of imagination as a path of understanding. The project starts with traveling to Romania as a study case, in a journey where encounters and empathy win over maps and scheduled visits. What I bring back with me is a series of situations, assemblages, a pattern of history, places, culture and affections belonging to the very present of Romania.These situations are plunged in another larger assemblage, the European one, with Sweden as a partaker. In this country’s desires and metamorphoses we can discover those myths that belong and affect our culture and our spaces.  Opus Alchemicum is a tale about myths, behavior and built environment. About Romania, or somewhere else. About ruins and gold. About invisible values and material affects. About a vanished land, about desire and nostalgia. About displacement, diaspora and costumes. About migration. About a journey and the gas station at the mid of the road. About metamorphoses, gypsy palaces and dowries. About matter, produced, traded and extinguished. About Prussian Blue and honey. About a tower, a fountain and a secret garden. About the alchemic process of making reality out of ideas. Opus Alchemicum utforskar fabricering av verklighet genom fantasi, den affektiva relationen mellan ide och materia i en bygg omgivning. Ett alkemiskt experiment, genom manipulation av verkliga fakta och deras transformation till myter, berättelser, ritualer och objekt, försöker detta projekt att påvisa hur myter inte bara är producerade utan hur de också producerar en ”verklighet” genom att skapa en kollektiv förståelse och ett mönster av relationer, roller och föreställningar. Projektet försöker att avslöja mekanismerna av verklighet i en handling av analogi. Rollen av arkitektur, byggnader och objekt undersöks i sin förvandlade korrespondens. Myter är både konstruerade och avslöjade genom språkkoden för en diskurs. Resultatet är ett verk av alkemi, en produkt av inbillningsförmåga längst en väg för förståelse. Projektet startar med en resa till Rumänien som studie fall, i en färd där möten och empati segrar över kartor och schemalagda möten. Det jag tog med mig tillbaka var en serie av situationer, samlingar och mönster av historien. Platser, kultur och känslor som representerar det nuvarande Rumänien. Situationer som störtar in till ett större sammanhang i form av det Europeiska med Sverige som deltagare. I detta lands önskningar och metamorfoser kan vi upptäcka de myter som tillhör och påverkar vår kultur och dess rum. Opus Alchemicum är en berättelse om myter, beteenden och byggd omgivning. Om Rumänien eller någon annanstans. Om ruiner och guld. Om osynliga värden och materiell inverkan. Om ett försvunnet land av begär och nostalgi. Om förskjutningar, förskingringar och kostymer. Om migration. Om färder och bensinstationen i mitten av resan. Om metamorfoser, romerska palats och hemgifter. Om materia, producerad, handlad och utsläckt. Om preussiskt blått och honung. Om ett torn en fontän och en hemlig trädgård. Om den alkemiska processen av att skapa verklighet genom idéer

A Short-term Intervention for Long-term Fairness in the Labor Market

The persistence of racial inequality in the U.S. labor market against a general backdrop of formal equality of opportunity is a troubling phenomenon that has significant ramifications on the design of hiring policies. In this paper, we show that current group disparate outcomes may be immovable even when hiring decisions are bound by an input-output notion of "individual fairness." Instead, we construct a dynamic reputational model of the labor market that illustrates the reinforcing nature of asymmetric outcomes resulting from groups' divergent accesses to resources and as a result, investment choices. To address these disparities, we adopt a dual labor market composed of a Temporary Labor Market (TLM), in which firms' hiring strategies are constrained to ensure statistical parity of workers granted entry into the pipeline, and a Permanent Labor Market (PLM), in which firms hire top performers as desired. Individual worker reputations produce externalities for their group; the corresponding feedback loop raises the collective reputation of the initially disadvantaged group via a TLM fairness intervention that need not be permanent. We show that such a restriction on hiring practices induces an equilibrium that, under particular market conditions, Pareto-dominates those arising from strategies that statistically discriminate or employ a "group-blind" criterion. The enduring nature of equilibria that are both inequitable and Pareto suboptimal suggests that fairness interventions beyond procedural checks of hiring decisions will be of critical importance in a world where machines play a greater role in the employment process.Comment: 10 page