出版社：Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines
摘要：The theoretical background of the empirical investigations to be reported to this paper arepositionalist aggregation functions which are numerically representable. More concretely,the broad Borda rule is proposed as an aggregation mechanism for the case of a complete set(profile) of so-called individual extended orderings. The Borda rule becomes aninterpersonal positional rule and it is modified to reflect considerations of equity. Suchconsiderations are introduced by transforming the original linear weighting system such thatan equity axiom well known from the social choice literature is satisfied.Students both from Osnabrück University and from universities in the Baltic States wereconfronted with questionnaires that describe six "situations", most of which reflect differentaspects of needs. All situations start from the preference structure which underlies the equityaxiom, viz. There is one person who is worst off under two alternatives x and y. This personis better off under x than under y whereas all the other individuals who are introducedsuccessively are better off under y than under x. Three of the points we are focusing on are:(a) What is the percentage of respondents satisfying the equity axiom. (b) How often do thestudents revise their initial decision when more and more people join the side of the moreadvantaged. (c) Are there major differences in the empirical results between West and East.We have found that Western students satisfy the equity axiom to a high degree but they arenot willing to follow Rawls's unique focus on the worst of (group of) individual(s)unconditionally, i.e. independently of the number of persons involved. There are stunningdifferences between the results from the East and the West. Though the number of studentsfrom Osnabrück involved in the study is much higher than the number of students from thethree Baltic States, it is fair to say that aspects of neediness and the protection of basic humanrights currently are not very high "on the agenda" among the probants from the East whoparticipated in our investigation.
