WANG Yilin：Individual Preference and Social Justice in Public Services Allocation: A Questionnaire Experimentbased on the Method of Empirical Social Choice

Abstract：We introduce different kinds of hypothetical situations to investigate the change of aggregative results of collective choice on the level of individual preference.By introducing the method of empirical social choice, we analyze some issues which can only be researched by thought experiment traditionally.We find that in a baseline treatment with certain identity of rich and poor, all subjects tend to choose the alternative which can benefit themselves.In the treatment of “veil of ignorance” and “impartial spectator”, most subjects will choose an alternative with mild redistribution.The choices of subjects will be affected by the factor of “efficiency”, but the effect of the factor of “deserve” is not significant.In any situation, the observed choices of subjects don't totally accord with theoretical predictions.Some individual characters may influence subjects' choices.We have an important policy implication that people will try to balance justice principle and efficiency criterion, and this is a key constraint of promoting the equalization of public services.

Key words： Empirical Social Choice    Justice    Efficiency    Public Services    Experiment

source:Finance & Trade Economics ,No.9,2015