Economics Seminar（2014-23）

Topic: Primary Social Goods and the Rawlsian Difference Principle

Speaker:Yang,Jiancheng

Affiliation: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica

Time:Tuesday, 21 Octorber. 14:00-15:30pm

Location: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract：

While most economists view the relationship between equality and efficiency as a tradeoff or conflict, Rawls (1971) saw it differently according to his proposed difference principle: equality has priority over efficiency in essence. Previous experimental studies lend little support to the importance of the difference principle -- subjects whose social preferences obey the difference principle represent only a small minority in the sample. This paper finds a much stronger support -- a salient majority of subjects whose social preferences obey the difference principle. A key to our departure from previous studies lies in that allocating monetary payoffs between subjects in our experimental design embodies not simply choosing the distribution of payoffs but more importantly the distribution of Rawls's so-called “primal social goods,” which serve as instruments critical to the fulfillment of people's rational desire.

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