The veil of public ignorance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Nehring, K
• 署名单位: Institute for Advanced Study - USA; University of California System; University of California Davis
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2003.12.009
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 247-270
• 关键词: Asymmetric information; Utilitarianism; Interim Pareto efficiency; Veil of ignorance; Bayesian aggregation

摘要

A theory of cooperative choice under incomplete information is developed in which agents possess private information at the time of contracting and have agreed on a utilitarian standard of evaluation governing choices under complete information. The task is to extend this standard to situations of incomplete information. Our first main result generalizes Harsanyi's (J. Polit. Econ. 63 (1955) 309) classical result to situations of incomplete information, assuming that group preferences satisfy Bayesian Coherence and Interim Pareto Dominance. These axioms are mutually compatible if and only if a common prior exists. We argue that this result partly resolves the impossibility of Bayesian preference aggregation under complete information. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.