Cappelen, Alexander W. () (Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo) Tungodden, Bertil () (Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)
Abstract
According to liberal egalitarian ethics, individuals should be rewarded for factors under their control, but not for factors outside their control. A fundamental challenge to liberal egalitarian theories of justice is how to do this without violating minimal egalitarian and liberal requirements. The paper analyses the effects of two such requirements: the principle of equal reward and the principle of reward independence. The exact formulations of these principles depend on how we interpret the concept of reward. We propose two different definitions of reward, contrafactual and interpersonal reward, where both can be given a general and narrow interpretation. Given this, we show that it is impossible to establish a framework that is truly liberal egalitarian in all respects and that a generalized version of the egalitarian equivalent mechanism is the most plausible liberal egalitarian approach.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Oslo University, Department of Economics in its series Memorandum with number
15/2004.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Moulin, Herve, 1994.
"Social choice,"
Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,
in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 31, pages 1091-1125
Elsevier.
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