出版社:Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines
摘要:Recently many philosophers and social choice theorists have questionedtraditional welfare egalitarianism by introducing a notion of responsibility.They propose to distinguish between two sets of individual characteristics: thosefor which individuals are to be kept responsible and those for which they can becompensated. This approach raises the related questions of where to draw theline between these two sets of characteristics and how to operationalise thenotion of "responsibility-sensitive fair compensation". The answers to thesequestions may depend on the cultural context. We present some empiricalresults from questionnaire studies in Belgium, Burkina Faso and Indonesia. Thenotion of control seems to play an important role in determining the variablesfor which individuals are to be held responsible. The strong notion of "fullcompensation" is clearly rejected in favour of more conservative distributionrules. Moreover, a large fraction of the respondents take the non-liberalposition that the talented should be punished if they do not use their talents in aproductive way. We find some intercultural differences. Belgian students aremore in favour of redistribution. Indonesian students are the most conservative.While the Pareto principle is decisively rejected in Burkina Faso and Belgium, itis accepted by a majority of the Indonesian sample