Stakeholder Fairness Under an Induced ‘Veil of Ignorance'

Abstract

John Rawls introduced the ‘veil of ignorance' in social contract theory to bring about a common conception of justice, and hypothesized that it will enable rational individuals to choose distributive shares on basis of ‘maximin' principle. R. E. Freeman conceptualised stakeholder fairness using the Rawlsian ‘veil of ignorance'. In contrast to Rawls' theory, John Harsanyi postulated that rational individuals behind the ‘veil of ignorance' will choose allocation to maximise expected utility. This article investigates how subjects choose allocations behind the ‘veil of ignorance,' in a laboratory experiment, and interprets the findings in light of stakeholder fairness. The ‘veil of ignorance' was induced on randomly paired and mutually anonymous subjects, who were asked to choose allocations in a simultaneous move discrete choice Nash demand game. Both ‘maximin' principle and expected utility maximisation was found to be used by the subjects. Choice of allocations where no one is worse off vis-à-vis status quo was salient. This is consistent with Freeman's Principle of Governance.