BSCS3 Seminar: Piercing the Veil of Ignorance
Shachar Kariv, UC Berkeley

Guest Speaker: Shachar Kariv, UC Berkeley
Professor of Economics

Date: April 29th, 2009

Time: 1pm - 2:30pm

Location: Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall, UC San Diego

Live Webcast: http://video-jsoe.ucsd.edu/asx/SchacharKariv.asx

Host: Mat McCubbins, BSCS3

event website: http://bscs3.calit2.net

ABSTRACT:
The talk is motivated in part by work of John Rawls and John Harsanyi, who argue for ethical theories based on social choices that individuals would make in the original position, behind a veil of ignorance -- that is, "without knowing their own social and economic positions, their own special interests in the society, or even their own personal talents and abilities (or their lack of them)." The PI's points of departure from the work of Rawls and Harsanyi -- and the enormous literature they spawned -- comes from two observations that have been quite overlooked. The first is that (under natural assumptions), choice behavior/preferences behind the veil of ignorance are determined by choice behavior/preferences in front of the veil of ignorance. The second is that although the original position is a hypothetical situation developed as a thought experiment, it is possible to "replicate" it in the laboratory. Beginning with the theoretical and experimental findings, we can address important questions concerning personal and social preferences, including: Is observed behavior consistent with the utility maximization hypothesis on which economic theory relies? Can underlying preferences be recovered from observed choices? Can social preferences be characterized experimentally? How do preferences differ across subjects? What is the relationship between personal preferences and social preferences? A related paper (with Bill Zane of UCLA) can be downloaded from http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~kariv/KZ_I.pdf.


SPEAKER BIO:

Shachar Kariv was educated at Tel-Aviv University and New York University, where he received his PhD in 2003, the same year he joined Berkeley's economics department. Professor Kariv was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Studies School of Social Science (2005-6). He is the recipient of the UC Berkeley Graduate Economics Association Outstanding Advising Award (2006-7) and of New York University Outstanding Teaching Awards (2001, 2002) and the Outstanding Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences (2003). He has also received a National Science Foundation Grant for studying decisions under uncertainty (2006-7). Professor Kariv's research has been published in a variety of academic journals including, the American Economic Review, Games and Economic Behavior, and Economic Theory.