Abstract
This chapter examines risk, insurance, and option luck in relation to responsibility and equal opportunities. It considers the principle that individuals should never be held responsible for being lucky or unlucky, and as such the notion of option luck is prima facie unacceptable. It applies the Conditional Equality and Egalitarian-Equivalence criteria to problems of allocation under risk to justify policies that are sometimes similar to policies based on the notion of option luck. It also shows how the intuition underlying the notion of option luck can be reinterpreted in terms of the liberal reward principle. Finally, it discusses Ronald Dworkin's concept of option luck and his idea of a hypothetical insurance market.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780191808579 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780199215911 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 30 2015 |
Externally published | Yes |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Keywords
- Conditional equality
- Egalitarian-equivalence
- Equal opportunities
- Insurance
- Liberal reward principle
- Option luck
- Responsibility
- Risk
- Ronald dworkin