Moral Sentiments and Social Choice: Fairness Considerations in University Admissions

We examine the implications for social choice of individuals having an intrinsic sense of fairness. Taking the viewpoint that social justice reflects the moral attitudes of the constituent members, we analyze the effect of the intensity of the individual sense of fairness on university admission policies. Assuming that these policies are determined by bargaining over test scores to be used as cut-off points for admission of members of diverse social groups show that, in general, a more intense sense of fairness of the members of a group leads to an admission policy that is more compatible with their idea of fairness. Consequently, a society whose members have a common notion tends to implement fairer admission policies when the intensity of the sense of fairness of individual memebrs increase. This is even if the policies are ultimately determined by the bargaining power of the different groups.

A theory of stochastic choice under uncertainty

In this paper we propose a characterization of stochastic choice under risk and under uncertainty. We presume that decision makers' actual choices are governed by randomly selected states of mind, and study the representation of decision makers' perceptions of the stochastic process underlying the selection of their state of mind. The connections of this work to the literatures on random choice, choice behavior when preference are incomplete; choice of menus; and grades of indecisiveness are also discussed

Calibration results for non-expected utility theories

Pre-print draft version dated July 24, 2006. Final version published by Wiley; available online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/Rabin (2000) proved that a low level of risk aversion with respect to small gambles leads to a high, and absurd, level of risk aversion with respect to large gambles. Rabin’s arguments strongly depend on expected utility theory, but we show that similar arguments apply to general non-expected utility theories

Dual Betweenness

A key feature of the rank dependent model for decision making under risk is that the weighting of an outcome depends on its relative rank. This theory received numerous axiomatizations, however, all these sets of axioms need to make an explicit reference to the ranking of the outcomes. This situation is unsatisfactory, as it seems to be desirable to get the ranking property of this model as a consequence of the model, rather than as an assumption. Yaari [9] offered a special version of this model (called dual theory), where the utility function is linear. This paper offers a set of axioms implying a generalization of Yaari's dual theory, without making any reference to the order of the outcomes. The main axiom is called dual betweenness, which, unlike the usual case, is made on random variables rather than distribution functions. We thank SSHRCC and the Israel Institute of Business Research for financial support. y Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997..

Continuity, completeness, betweenness and cone-monotonicity

A non-trivial, transitive and reflexive binary relation on the set of lotteries satisfying independence that also satisfies any two of the following three axioms satisfies the third: completeness, Archimedean and mixture continuity (Dubra (2011)). This paper generalizes Dubra's result in two ways: First, by replacing independence with a weaker betweenness axiom. Second, by replacing independence with a weaker cone-monotonicity axiom. The latter is related to betweenness and, in the case in which outcomes correspond to real numbers, implies monotonicity with respect to first-order stochastic dominance

MORAL SENTIMENTS AND SOCIAL CHOICE: FAIRNESS CONSIDERATIONS IN UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS

Abstract We examine the implications of individuals having an intrinsic sense of fairness with regard to social choice. Taking the viewpoint that social justice re ‡ects the moral attitudes of the constituent members, we analyze the e¤ect of the intensity of the individual sense of fairness on university admission policies. We assume that these policies are determined by bargaining over test scores to be used as cut-o¤ points for admission of members of diverse social groups. We show when a more intense sense of fairness of the members of a group leads to admission policy that is more compatible with the idea of fairness held by memebers of that group. Consequently, a society whose members have a common notion of fairness may implement fairer admission policies even if these policies are ultimately determined by the bargaining power of the di¤erent groups

Generalized utilitarianism and Harsanyi's impartial observer theorem

Pre-print draft dated April 15, 2010.Harsanyi's impartial observer must consider two types of lotteries: imaginary identity lotteries (“accidents of birth”) that she faces as herself and the real outcome lotteries (“life chances”) to be faced by the individuals she imagines becoming. If we maintain a distinction between identity and outcome lotteries, then Harsanyi-like axioms yield generalized utilitarianism, and allow us to accommodate concerns about different individuals' risk attitudes and concerns about fairness. Requiring an impartial observer to be indifferent as to which individual should face similar risks restricts her social welfare function, but still allows her to accommodate fairness. Requiring an impartial observer to be indifferent between identity and outcome lotteries, however, forces her to ignore both fairness and different risk attitudes, and yields a new axiomatization of Harsanyi's utilitarianism

Calibration results for incomplete preferences

In this work we demonstrate that incomplete expected utility preferences are susceptible to criticism similar to that addressed at their complete analogues: even a modest degree of risk aversion in the small is sufficient to imply extreme and unreasonable degree of risk aversion in the large. Our results thus shed doubt on the usefulness of incomplete expected utility preferences for practical and theoretical purposes