Moral sentiments and social choice

We examine the implications, for social choice, of individuals having an intrinsic sense of fairness. Taking the viewpoint that social justice reflects the moral attitudes of the constituent members, we analyze the effect of the intensity of the individual sense of fairness on the solution of Nash bargaining over random allocation procedures. We use a stylized model of university admission policies to illustrate our approach. We show that even if social policies are ultimately determined by the bargaining power of the different groups, a society whose members have a common notion of fairness tends to implement fairer admission policies when the intensity of the sense of fairness of individual members increases. 1 A Positive Approach to Normative Economics Social policies and institutions are shaped by the power of the constituent members to influence these policies and institutions. A well recognized source of power is the conviction of individuals that the policies they support are just. In general, different individuals may hold distinct ideas of fairness with varying degrees of conviction. Hence the design of policies and institutions ultimately depends on the degree to which the idea of fairness is shared by the individual members, on the intensity of their moral conviction, and on the mechanism by which individual preferences are translated into social decisions. In this paper we investigate the implications of individual concern for fairness in shaping social policies. We assume that such policies are the outcome of bargaining among social groups with diverse interests that may or may not subscribe to a common notion of fairness. Consequently, policies are shaped by the relative bargaining power of the different groups which depends, among other things, on the intensity of their moral conviction. In other words, to the extent that these policies are compatible with some notion of fairness, it is because the individual members of the groups that subscribe to this notion of fairness