Pietro Navarra
Settimana #1: Libertà e redistribuzione Economia e Finanza Pubblica
Pietro Navarra
Settimana #1: Libertà e redistribuzione Economia e Finanza Pubblica
Introduction
This lecture is about freedom, its measurement and the policy implications regarding the impact of freedom on the size and scope of the welfare state
We develop an empirical measure of freedom consistent with the Millian view of individuality. We show that such a measure drives individual preferences for redistribution as well as cross country differences in welfare spending
Unfolding this message we obtain a further important analytical result within the wider picture where the role of liberalism in society is designed. The search for foundations (in terms of freedom) to policy prescriptions as well as the strengthening of the connection between the empirical and the theoretical reflection on freedom led us to advance a line of thought that might salvage liberalism
Introduction
The literature on the measurement of freedom developed along distinct paths with only occasional cross-references
The first body of work is theoretical: it aims at establishing axioms for saying whether a state of affairs is freedom-wise better than another (Sen, 1988; Pattanaik and Xu, 1990; Sugden, 1998; Bavetta & Guala, 2003; Bavetta and Peragine, 2006)
The second line of inquiry is empirical: it aims at constructing a set of indices of economic, political and civil liberties to asses their impact on the functioning of the economy and its institutions (Gwartney & Lawson, 2007; Holmes, Fuelner & O'Grady, 2008)
Introduction
Despite their differences, ranging from objectives to methodology, the relationship between the theoretical and empirical streams of research may be illustrated by means of a two by two table
Introduction
The first contribution is to provide an account of how we move from the left to the right column of the upper row which consists of a defense of the autonomy freedom measure as compared to other measurements of freedom existing in the literature
The second contribution is to defend a theory that accounts for our empirical measure which grounds the results concerning performance upon firm conceptual foundations. The autonomy freedom data collected at the individual level allow us to analyze who the autonomy free individuals are and what they think. We may also examine the correlation between autonomy freedom and other measures of subjective well-being
Introduction
The third contribution is to investigate the effect that different degrees of autonomy freedom have on both the individuals' preferences for redistribution and the size of the welfare state
The value of choice
Choice is important for substantive as well as instrumental reasons. Choosing from various options is good in itself, but also because it has an intrinsic procedural value since it fosters the moral and intellectual faculties of a person
The substantive aspect of choice captures a quantitative concept of freedom of choice which has been measured by two different metrics:
The Simple Cardinality Ordering (SCO): it formalizes axiomatically the idea that the larger the extent of options a decision maker may choose from, the larger his extent of choice (Pattanaik and Xu, 1990)
Preference Ordering (PO): it considers the individual’s preferences over available opportunities. Freedom of choice is greater where access to more preferred options is wider (Sen, 1991)
The value of choice
SCO counts the number of available options for the decision-makers, but fails to account for the role of individual preferences
PO suggests a solution to take into account the individual preferences, but runs into counter examples and fails to address the procedural value of choice
We argued for a measure of freedom of choice grounded on the Millian notion of individuality according to which choice has substantive as well as procedural value
Our measure of choice stresses the deliberative (instrumental) aspect of individual decision-making
The value of choice
According to J. S. Mill (On Liberty), having alternatives to choose from confronts decision makers with a process where the different available courses of action must be weighed
Such a process calls for “perception, judgment, discriminative feelings, mental activity, and even moral preference” (Mill, 1859)
In so doing, the deliberative process contributes to the development and fostering of the decision maker’s individuality (or autonomy)
Choices, when are the outcome of a conscious deliberation, are considered as the true expression of the individual’s self
Availability of options (objective component) and the conscious deliberation over these options (subjective component) are the two fundamental elements that shape an individual’s idividuality (autonomy)
Measuring autonomy: Intro
Our task is to develop an empirical measure of opportunity and to ground it upon firm conceptual basis
We shall point out that a particular approach to the measurement of opportunity proposed in the freedom of choice literature sets an environment which is amenable to the success of our task
We shall argue that a specific question proposed by the World Value Survey (WVS) captures the notion of autonomy developed by Bavetta and Guala (2003 and 2008) and supported by the axiomatic measure constructed in Bavetta and Peragine (2006)
We shall call our empirical measure a measure autonomy freedom (AF)
Measuring autonomy: Intro
As Bavetta and Guala (2003) write:
[t]he main attraction of leading an autonomous life is procedural in character: autonomy provides a certain value to one's action by linking in a coherent fashion one's achievements with one's preferences, as part of a process of self--conscious creation
In the ideal autonomous life, what is achieved must have been chosen, what is chosen must have been preferred, and preferences must be `of one's own' (not borrowed, for example, or not hetero--directed) (p. 428)
Measuring autonomy: Intro
Our measure must then link consistently the theoretical and the empirical measure of autonomy freedom
TH: FOC --> preferences --> choice
procedural value make chooser potential preferences accountable
EM: FOC --> control --> achievements Attribution theory leads from control to achievements If the argument is sustainable, then TH EM
The structure of the argument
To illustrate how such a coherent composition may be obtained, we organize our argument as follows
We start with the reasons for valuing choice
We establish the connection between preferences and choice
We introduce the WVS question that shall be used to measure AF
We show that reference in such a question to ‘freedom of choice’ is coherent with our theoretical interpretation of autonomy as the latter is an integral part of autonomy
We show that reference in such a question to ‘control’ is coherent with our theoretical interpretation of autonomy since autonomous persons are more likely to retain control over life outcomes (achievements)
We further corroborate the relation between AF and control by means of some empirical analysis
Reasons for valuing choice
According to Sugden (1998) choice is valuable because it fosters the moral and intellectual faculties of the decision maker
To choose a person has to resort on her "perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference" (Mill, 1859, p. 122), to rely on her ability to connect means and ends, her determination to stick to what has chosen. She must be able to make sense of her selection of a course of action
The act of choosing calls for the extensive involvement of the chooser’s qualities. It becomes the focal point around which the exercise of one's own individuality is shaped and even fostered, leading to the strengthening of a person's autonomy
Reasoning for valuing choice
The value of choice has an evident procedural flavor in the sense that it depends upon the value that may be attributed to the deliberative process that it makes possible
Yet, choice has also an instrumental value given by its contribution to the exercise of autonomy: the value of choice derives from the close bonds that tie together the personal involvement in the deliberative process with the exercise of an autonomous behavior
The instrumental value ought to be distinguished from other procedural reasons for attributing value to choice that have an intrinsic nature. These are not relevant for our argument as they can hardly be applied to policy (and practical) considerations
Preferences and choice
Choice is then valuable for procedural and instrumental reasons. The issue is how to measure the procedural and instrumental value of choice
The notion of potential preference developed by Sugden (1998) plays a crucial role in linking preferences to choice and in the construction of theoretical underpinnings of our measure of autonomy
A preference ranking is potential if it is a ranking that a decision maker might have had, even though it does not represent her actual preferences. Potential preferences liberate opportunity metrics from reliance upon the contingent factors that make an individual prefer what she prefers here and now and allow the measure to focus upon the decision process
Preferences and choice
Freeing choice from contingent factors shifts the domain of opportunity metric to the pre-deliberation stage of choice (Wertheimer, 1987). There the agent has not yet accomplished the deliberative process that will lead her to an actual choice
The pre-deliberation stage of choice is where autonomy freedom should be assessed because then a person refers to those individual and moral qualities that make up her exercise of an autonomous behavior
An autonomous person at the pre-deliberation stage is reflecting on the alternative courses of action open for choice calling her personal and moral qualities to bear upon her final decision. And such a process, that will eventually lead to her choice, is mimicked, at this stage, by the careful screening and weighing of her preferences
The empirical meassure of autonomy
The question we exploit to measure autonomy freedom is:
A173 - how much freedom of choice and control. It reads as follows:
Some people feel they have completely free choice and control over their life, while other people feel that what they do has no real effect on what happens to them. Please use a ten-point scale in which 1 means none at all and 10 means a great deal to indicate how much freedom of choice and control you have over the way your life turns out
For A173 to be consistent with our interpretation of autonomy we need to argue that the concepts of `freedom of choice' and `control' relate to the extent of an individual's autonomous behavior. That is, the more autonomous a person is, the more he enjoys freedom of choice and control
Freedom of choice and autonomy
Suppose that an additional opportunity is not significant in the sense that no chooser would prefer or could distinguish it from the other available opportunities
The principle of addition of insignificant opportunities (ADINS) introduced in the literature claims that accessing an insignificant opportunity does not change value to the choice problem
If choice has procedural value, the new problem of choice must be at least as significant as the old one. Though the amount of choice may not be increased by availability of the new opportunity, the significance of the choice problem is untouched since it depends upon the complexity of the deliberative process rather than the value of the specific opportunity now available for choice
Freedom of choice and autonomy
From the analysis of the principle of ADINS it follows that freedom of choice must be connected with autonomy
ADINS claims that every option counts to the deliberative process. Freedom of choice is then necessary for the exercise of an autonomous behaviour since if opportunities are not available, no deliberation could be undertaken
This is not necessarily the case if choice has substantive value since freedom of choice could be realized even in the limit case where access is granted solely to the most preferred opportunity (Sen’s necessary condition)
Comments