Preferences for equity in health behind a veil of ignorance

Abstract

Individual attitudes to distributions of life years between two groups in a society are explored by means of an experiment. Subjects are asked to place themselves behind a veil of ignorance which is specified in terms of risk (known probabilities) for some subjects and in terms of uncertainty (unknown probabilities) for some subjects. The latter is argued to be the appropriate interpretation of Rawls' notion. It is found that subjects exhibit convex preferences over life years for the two groups, and that preferences do not differ between the risk and the uncertainty specifications.

Uncertainty aversion: a reply to the paper by Andersson and Lyttkens

“…First, they claim ( [1], p. 376) that Fennema and Wakker's finding [2] that comonotonic independence is violated no less than independence in circumstances of uncertainty is consistent with their own findings. This conclusion is confusing.…”

“…A. OLIVER their claim that the Ellsberg paradox implies uncertainty aversion, and that this is not consistent with their own findings ( [1], p. 376). The basic concept of the Ellsberg paradox can be explained with the aid of Table 2 [5].…”

How to Be Helpful to Multiple People at Once

“…Various other studies have empirically evaluated preferences under the veil of ignorance (Andersson & Lyttkens, 1999; Carlsson, Gupta, & Johansson‐Stenman, 2003; Frohlich, Oppenheimer, & Eavey, 1987; Johansson‐Stenman, Carlsson, & Daruvala, 2002; Oleson, 2001). Of the studies that evaluated metrics similar to ours, Frohlich et al (1987) found that participants preferred maximizing average income with a floor constraint, and Oleson (2001) found that participants demonstrated both maximin and IA behavior—however, this collection of studies was different enough from our paradigm (e.g., studying risk aversion, or looking at welfare over an entire hypothetical society) that the different contexts likely significantly affected outcomes.…”

An Effort Worth Making: A Qualitative Study of How Swedes Respond to Antibiotic Resistance

“…The authors derived, also based on some empirical data (cf. Andersson and Lyttkens, 1999 ), that ‘most people would generally agree on making appropriate efforts to preserve antibiotic efficacy for future patients through limiting antibiotic use with current patients’ ( Krockow and Tarrant, 2019 : 758). In substantial agreement with Millar’s principle and, according to Krockow and Tarrant (2019) , in line with Rawls’ idea of ‘minimising the worst outcome’, they considered it ethically justifiable to make exceptions only in extreme cases, to prevent patients’ death.…”