Conceptions of freedom and ranking opportunity sets. A typology

A wide diversity of rankings of opportunity sets are characterized through what is now commonly called the freedom of choice literature. An op-portunity set is better ranked when it provides more freedom. This survey is or-ganized as a typology of the rankings, according to the specific conception of free-dom they capture: freedom of choice, freedom as autonomy, freedom as exercise of significant choices, negative freedom. The role of preferences in freedom rankings is discussed in the conclusion.Keywords opportunity sets, freedom of choice, well-being, typologyopportunity sets, freedom of choice, well-being, typology

Freedom, Opportunity and Wellbeing

This paper reexamines key results from the measurement of opportunity freedom, or the extent to which a set of options offers a decision maker real opportunities to achieve. Three cases are investigated: no preferences, a single preference, and plural preferences. The three co the cardinality relation, the indirect utility relation, and the effective freedom relation variations are considered within a common axiomatic framework. Special attention is given to representations of freedom rankings, with the goal of providing practical approaches for measuring opportunity freedom and the extent of capabilities.

Measuring and Implementing Equality of Opportunity for Income

Departing from the welfarist tradition, recent theories of justice focus on individual opportunities as the appropriate standard for distributive judgments. Justice is seen as requiring equality of opportunity, instead of outcomes, among the individuals. To explore how this philosophical conception can be translated into concrete public policy, we select the in-come as relevant outcome and the income tax as the relevant redistributive policy, and we address the following questions: (i) what is the degree of opportunity inequality in an income distribution? (ii) how to design an opportunity egalitarian income tax policy? Both positive and normative criteria for ranking income distributions on the basis of equality of oppor-tunities are derived. Moreover, we characterize an opportunity egalitarian income tax policy and we formulate criteria for choosing among alternative tax systems.

Compensation and responsibility

This a chapter for the Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare. It deals with the theory of fairness applied to situations when individuals are partly responsible for their characteristics.fairness, responsibility, equal opportunity, compensation, handicap, talent, effort

Beyond Personalization: Research Directions in Multistakeholder Recommendation

Recommender systems are personalized information access applications; they are ubiquitous in today's online environment, and effective at finding items that meet user needs and tastes. As the reach of recommender systems has extended, it has become apparent that the single-minded focus on the user common to academic research has obscured other important aspects of recommendation outcomes. Properties such as fairness, balance, profitability, and reciprocity are not captured by typical metrics for recommender system evaluation. The concept of multistakeholder recommendation has emerged as a unifying framework for describing and understanding recommendation settings where the end user is not the sole focus. This article describes the origins of multistakeholder recommendation, and the landscape of system designs. It provides illustrative examples of current research, as well as outlining open questions and research directions for the field.Comment: 64 page

Opportunity analysis of newborn screening programs

There exist congenital diseases that reduce newborns' potential opportunities. This reduction is sometimes alleviated if the congenital disease is early detected thanks to a newborn screening program. We propose an outcome measurement of newborn screening programs based on the opportunity gains they offer. We show that, under plausible assumptions, the ranking of the available screening programs for a particular disease, according to this new outcome measurement, do not depend on the metric of opportunity. We also apply our model to the current debate about choosing between a selective or a universal newborn hearing screening program to detect congenital hearing impairment.opportunities, potential success, screening programs

The capabilities approach

Capabilities and functionings are new and attractive concepts for assessing the well-being and advantage of individuals. Functionings refer to a person’s achievements, i.e. what she manages to do or to be. Capabilities refer to her real opportunities and incorporate the idea of freedom. We discuss how recent theoretical and empirical work has improved our insights in some of the key questions of the approach. How to measure opportunities and how to balance freedom and responsibility? How to formulate a list of capabilities which can be used to analyse changes over time and differences between different societies without being open to manipulation? How to construct an overall index of well-being and what should be the relative role of a priori ethical evaluations and of the opinions of the individuals themselves? What is the relationship between measures of well-being and advantage at the individual and at the aggregate level? To make further progress it is crucial, first, to estimate structural models with individual data, analysing the link between individual achievements, the socioeconomic and environmental background of the persons concerned and the specific features of the individual processes of choice and decision-making; and, second, to integrate the insights from these models in a coherent ethical framework specifying the role of individual preferences and the limits of personal responsibility.capabilities, opportunities

Environmental economics and valuation: towards a practical investment framework for Catchment Management Authorities in New South Wales

The Catchment Management Authorities in New South Wales have programs that are collectively investing $436 million over four years to achieve catchment-wide natural resource/environmental improvements. In this paper, we consider the question of how to best allocate these resources so as to increase the well-being of the public within catchments and the state. We consider the current approaches used by CMAs and make a case for Benefit-Cost Analysis as an alternative means of assessing ex ante questions of priority setting at the catchment level and for project appraisal. A major issue for BCA is the estimation of potential benefits from project investments, particularly the estimation of values that catchment communities and those living outside the catchments place on the non-use benefits associated with environmental improvements. We discuss alternative means of eliciting such values and propose the stated-preference method of Choice Modelling as a means of overcoming this Benefit-Cost Analysis shortcoming, because it incorporates advances in non-market valuation.environmental, economics, choice modelling, non-use values, investment framework, Environmental Economics and Policy,

PRINCIPLES OF COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS

This paper summarizes the procedure for the economic evaluation of government projects and policy reforms. It begins with the social welfare function underpinnings of cost-benefit analysis including the role of distributive weights and the choice of numeraire. It then turns to the conduct of a social cost-benefit analysis using the net present value criterion. This includes the shadow pricing of market products and inputs affected by the project, indirect welfare effects, the opportunity cost of project finance, the evaluation of non-marketed inputs and outputs, and the opportunity cost of risk. Issues involved in selecting a discount rate are discussed, especially those arising from imperfect capital markets. Finally, since many public projects have long-term consequences, the principles that might be used to take account of effects of projects on future generations are outlined. Techniques for accounting for these effects, such as generational accounting, are summarized and its shortcomings highlighted.evaluation, government projects, policy reforms, imperfect capital markets, generational accounting, shadow pricing