INCOMPLETE SOCIAL CONTRACTS
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Aghion, Philippe; Bolton, Patrick
署名单位：
Harvard University; University of London; University College London; Princeton University
刊物名称：
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
ISSN/ISSBN：
1542-4766
DOI：
10.1162/154247603322256765
发表日期：
2003
页码：
38-67
关键词：
摘要：
There is a long normative 'Social Contract' tradition that attempts to characterize ex-post income inequalities that are agreeable to all 'behind a veil of ignorance.' This paper takes a similar normative approach to characterize social decision-making procedures. It is shown that quite generally some form of majority-voting is preferred to unanimity 'behind a veil of ignorance' whenever society faces deadweight costs in making compensating transfers. Deviations from unanimity (or ex-post Pareto optimality) are ex-ante efficient to the extent that they economize on costly compensating transfers. Put another way, the optimal decision rule trades off the benefits of minority protection and those from greater flexibility. (JEL: H11, G33, G34, D63, P16, P48)
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