Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare

by Fleurbaey, Marc

• ISBN13: 9780199215911
• ISBN10: 019921591X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-08-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

What is a fair distribution of resources and other goods when individuals are partly responsible for their achievements? This book develops a theory of fairness incorporating a concern for personal responsibility, opportunities and freedom. With a critical perspective, it makes accessible the recent developments in economics and philosophy that define social justice in terms of equal opportunities. It also proposes new perspectives and original ideas. The book separates mathematical sections from the rest of the text, so that the main concepts and ideas are easily accessible to non-technical readers. It is often thought that responsibility is a complex notion, but this monograph proposes a simple analytical framework that makes it possible to disentangle the different concepts of fairness that deal with neutralizing inequalities for which the individuals are not held responsible, rewarding their effort, respecting their choices, or staying neutral with respect to their responsibility sphere. It dwells on paradoxes and impossibilities only as a way to highlight important ethical options and always proposes solutions and reasonable compromises among the conflicting values surrounding equality and responsibility. The theory is able to incorporate disincentive problems and is illustrated in the examination of applied policy issues such as: income redistribution when individuals may be held responsible for their choices of labor supply or education; social and private insurance when individuals may be held responsible for their risky lifestyle; second chance policies; the measurement of inequality of opportunities and social mobility.

Author Biography

Marc Fleurbaey is senior researcher at CNRS (Paris), Lachmann Fellow at the LSE (London), and a member of IDEP (Marseilles). He has previously been a professor of economics and an economist at INSEE. He has published extensively on welfare economics, fairness, inequality. He has been an editor of Economics and Philosophy and is a managing editor of Social Choice and Welfare.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Why responsibility?	p. 1
Responsibility and economics	p. 3
Responsibility and philosophy	p. 7
Is responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism half-libertarian or half-utilitarian?	p. 10
Outline of the book	p. 12
A reader's guide	p. 14
*General mathematical conventions	p. 14
Defining fairness	p. 15
Introduction	p. 15
*Model and notations	p. 16
An example	p. 18
The reward problem	p. 20
Compensation, neutrality and no-envy	p. 21
Analyzing compensation	p. 25
Analyzing neutrality	p. 29
*Fairness conditions	p. 34
*The distribution case	p. 39
Conclusion	p. 40
Distributing fairly	p. 41
Introduction	p. 41
Impossibilities and incompatibilities	p. 42
*The compensation-neutrality trade-off	p. 44
Weakening no-envy	p. 49
*No-envy rankings	p. 54
Conditional equality, egalitarian-equivalence	p. 61
*Characterization results	p. 64
Conclusion	p. 71
Introduction to incentive issues	p. 73
Introduction	p. 73
From allocation rules to social orderings	p. 74
*Social ordering functions	p. 75
Incentives	p. 81
*Optimal compensation policies	p. 88
Multiple goods and in-kind transfers	p. 96
*Satiation	p. 98
Conclusion	p. 99
Unequal skills	p. 101
Introduction	p. 101
*The model	p. 104
Compensation and neutrality	p. 105
*Axioms of fairness	p. 107
Conditional-equality solutions	p. 110
Egalitarian-equivalent solutions	p. 113
*Refinements of no-envy	p. 116
*Characterizations	p. 121
Conclusion	p. 126
Income redistribution	p. 127
Introduction	p. 127
From allocation rules to social orderings	p. 128
*Social ordering functions	p. 130
Fair income tax	p. 134
*Analyzing taxes	p. 139
*Unearned income	p. 146
Skills and quality of life	p. 148
Education and skills	p. 149
Conclusion	p. 150
Risk, insurance and option luck	p. 153
Introduction	p. 153
The luck factor	p. 155
Comprehensive well-being	p. 156
An ex post evaluation	p. 157
Two criteria	p. 160
*Risky actions and incentives	p. 164
*The intrinsic failure of insurance markets	p. 166
Dworkin's hypothetical insurance	p. 172
Conclusion	p. 175
Fresh starts	p. 177
Introduction	p. 177
Freedom and forgiveness	p. 179
Fresh start policies: an outline	p. 183
*Savings and moans	p. 187
Education, earnings, savings	p. 195
Conclusion	p. 197
Utilitarian reward	p. 199
Introduction	p. 199
Two social orderings	p. 200
Another compensation-reward dilemma	p. 202
*Axiomatic analysis	p. 206
Applications	p. 213
*The TU case	p. 213
*The distribution case	p. 215
Unequal skills and income taxation	p. 216
A statistical measurement of responsibility	p. 217
Alternative approaches to reward	p. 221
Conclusion	p. 224
Inequalities of opportunity and social mobility	p. 225
Introduction	p. 225
*Inequality indices	p. 226
Social mobility and social welfare	p. 230
*Social welfare decomposed	p. 232
Opportunity dominance versus compensation	p. 236
The partial-circumstance problem	p. 240
*More on the partical-circumstance problem	p. 241
Conclusion	p. 244
Responsibility, freedom and social justice	p. 245
Introduction	p. 245
The responsibility cut	p. 247
Responsibility or freedom	p. 253
Preference liability versus welfarism	p. 258
The responsibility sphere	p. 260
Ex-post inequalities matter	p. 263
Egalitarian-equivalence	p. 267
Equality of autonomy	p. 272
Conclusion	p. 275
Bibliography	p. 277
Index	p. 289
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