Norman Frohlich
Biographic Data
| ID | 128049 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Norman Frohlich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Norman |
| FAMILY NAME | Frohlich |
| SIGNATURE | FROHLICH N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manitoba |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 398 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Choosing Justice
Paradox lost
Despite a large body of experimental data demonstrating consistent group outcomes in social dilemmas, a close look at individual behavior at the micro level reveals a more complicated story. From round to round, individual behavior appears to be almost random. Using a combination of formal deduction and agent-based simulations, we argue that any theory of individual choice that accounts for the observed behavior of real people is likely to requir…
Justice Preferences and the Arrow Problem
Arrow showed that there is no general way to aggregate non-interpersonally comparable preferences or welfare into either a sensible social choice or a social welfare measure. With majority rule the problem manifests itself as voting cycles. The standard response to this problem has been developing `spatial models' built on restricted preferences (or welfare). We develop an alternative family of solutions. By assuming a culturally accepted concept…
A Very Short History of Distributive Justice
Skating on Thin Ice
The behavioral assumptions upon which Public Choice, and Game Theory are built, are false. This may not seem to be ‘too serious’ since many theories are only approximations. But a broad spectrum of experimental results has shown the problem to be greater than one of workable proportions. We illustrate the problems by examining some anomalous results in both voluntary contribution games and dictator games. We argue that there are difficulties with…
Modeling Other-Regarding Preferences and an Experimental Test
Optimal Policies and Socially Oriented Behavior
An Impartial Reasoning Solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma
Embedding Child Health Within a Framework of Regional Health
Assessing socioeconomic effects on different sized populations
OBJECTIVE: Researchers in health care often use ecological data from population aggregates of different sizes. This paper deals with a fundamental methodological issue relating to the use of such data. This study investigates the question of whether, in doing analyses involving different areas, the estimating equations should be weighted by the populations of those areas. It is argued that the correct answer to that question turns on some deep ep…
How People Reason about Ethics
Once upon a time there was an independently wealthy social activist. She worked very hard championing the causes of the poor and the oppressed. She did community organizing in poor black neighborhoods and worked at establishing day-care centers. The pay was not great and she had other talents, and so it seemed clear that she was not doing it for the money. Her actions seemed the epitome of ethically motivated behavior. One day she found herself i…
Managing Health Services
OBJECTIVES: University-based researchers in Manitoba, Canada, have used administrative data routinely collected as part of the national health insurance plan to design an integrated database and population-based health information system. This information system is proving useful to policymakers for answering such questions as: Which populations need more physician services? Which need fewer? Are high-risk populations poorly served? or do they ha…
Needs-Based Planning for Generalist Physicians
OBJECTIVES: The Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and Evaluation (MCHPE) collaborated with a provincially-appointed Physician Resource Committee in an assessment of provincial physician resources. RESEARCH DESIGN: Beginning with map-based analyses of physician supply and contacts across the province, compared with the health and socioeconomic characteristics of local populations, the study moved to a needs-based, regression-based approach to phys…
A role for structured observation in ethics
Experiencing impartiality to invoke fairness in the n-PD
A regional comparison of socioeconomic and health indices in a Canadian province
When Is Universal Contribution Best for the Group
Social scientists from a variety of disciplines have long been captivated by the simplicity and elegance of the two-person, binary choice prisoners' dilemma (2 × 2 PD). Over the years, the domain of the research has been extended and applied to events that are neither two person nor binary. We use a defining characteristic of the 2 × 2 PD to identify situations under which full levels of contribution are suboptimal. We propose, on the basis of th…
A Population-Based Health Information System
The authors introduce the Population Health Information System, its conceptual framework, and the data elements required to implement such a system in other jurisdictions. Among other innovations, the Population Health Information System distinguishes between indicators of health status (outcomes measures) and indicators of need for health care (socioeconomic measures of risk for poor health). The system also can be used to perform needs-based pl…
Stability and Trends Over 3 Years of Data
Because the health status of a population does not usually respond immediately to interventions, whether social or medical, the ability to analyze change over time is important. Therefore, patterns of change and stability in health status and health care use of Manitoba residents during a 3-year period from 1990 to 1992 were analyzed using the Population-based Health Information System. This article presents summary findings and discusses methodo…
Socioeconomic Status and the Health of the Population
To examine the relationship of a population's socioeconomic characteristics to its health status and use of health care services, a composite socioeconomic risk index was developed for the Population Health Information System. From a set of 23 socioeconomic indicators derived from public use census data, a summary index was formed from six indicators to generate profiles for the eight health regions of the province. Regional scores were plotted a…
Choosing Justice
An impartial reasoning solution to the prisoner's dilemma
Redistributive politics
Choosing Justice in Experimental Democracies with Production
We examine in a laboratory setting how direct participation in choosing a principle of distributive justice and a tax system impinges on subjects' attitudes and subsequent productivity when they participate in a task, produce income, and then experience losses or gains according to the tax system. Experience with a redistributive principle and its associated taxation system in a production environment does not detract from overall acceptance of t…
Choices of Principles of Distributive Justice in Experimental Groups
Experimental methods involving imperfect information are used to generate group choices of principles of distributive justice. Conditions approximating John Rawls's original in A Theory of Justice serve as the starting point, and his conjectures are contrasted with those of John Harsanyi. Three predictions implicit in the Rawlsian argument are tested: (1) individuals choosing a principle of economic distribution would be able to reach unanimous a…
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
Ending the war in Vietnam, preventing similar conflicts elsewhere, solving the problems associated with the pollution of our environment, and securing a just domestic social order are among the most important political issues of our time. These issues have one characteristic in common: the securing (or non-securing) of these objectives will be shared by all citizens of the United States. Consequently, these and similar phenomena can be analyzed i…
Choices of Principles of Distributive Justice in Experimental Groups
Experimental methods involving imperfect information are used to generate group choices of principles of distributive justice. Conditions approximating John Rawls's original in A Theory of Justice serve as the starting point, and his conjectures are contrasted with those of John Harsanyi. Three predictions implicit in the Rawlsian argument are tested: (1) individuals choosing a principle of economic distribution would be able to reach unanimous a…
Modeling Other-Regarding Preferences and an Experimental Test
Laboratory Results on Rawls's Distributive Justice
The behavioural underpinnings of Rawls's notion of distributive justice as outlined inA Theory of Justiceare tested in experimental contexts. Under conditions approximating Rawls's ‘original position’ (including the appropriate agenda, a ‘veil of ignorance’ and a choice rule designed to capture his main theoretical constraints), we test his ‘predictions’ that individuals would reach a unanimous consensus on a principle of distributive justice and…
Choosing Justice in Experimental Democracies with Production
We examine in a laboratory setting how direct participation in choosing a principle of distributive justice and a tax system impinges on subjects' attitudes and subsequent productivity when they participate in a task, produce income, and then experience losses or gains according to the tax system. Experience with a redistributive principle and its associated taxation system in a production environment does not detract from overall acceptance of t…
Beyond Economic Man
The existence and prevalence of behavior inconsistent with economists' definition of self-interest is measured in an experimental context. Experimental situations involving choices with monetary payoffs are designed to induce preferences. The subjects' behaviors are used to measure the existence and intensity of various forms of motivation based on “interactive preference functions.” Explicitly, we test for altruistic, egalitarian, and difference…
A regional comparison of socioeconomic and health indices in a Canadian province
A Test of Downsian Voter Rationality
Systematic testing of Downsian voter rationality is accomplished using a computer simulation technique on the 1964 SRC voting survey. The simulation tests both the hypotheses predicting whether an individual will vote and for whom an individual will vote. To evaluate the results of the tests we develop a statistic analogous to Pearson's r. This statistic measures the percentage improvement over a random guess technique. Utilizing this statistic, …
Self-Interest or Altruism, What Difference
This paper discusses the difficulties involved in relaxing the self-interest assumption as it is traditionally used in conjunction with the assumption of rationality. A formal model of altruistic behavior is developed and employed in the analysis of the problems of burden-sharing among rational allies. It is demonstrated that altruistic behavior among political actors is not, in general, sufficient to remove all areas of contention between the ac…
Individual Contributions for Collective Goods
There is a growing controversy as to what behavior is to be expected of individuals regarding contributions for the supply of collective goods. This paper attempts to settle some of the controversy. It attempts to do so not by showing that one of the positions taken is correct and the others wrong, but by showing that the various authors in question reach different conclusions about individual behavior in situations involving the potential supply…
Embedding Child Health Within a Framework of Regional Health
Experiencing impartiality to invoke fairness in the n-PD
The carrot and the stick
Skating on Thin Ice
The behavioral assumptions upon which Public Choice, and Game Theory are built, are false. This may not seem to be ‘too serious’ since many theories are only approximations. But a broad spectrum of experimental results has shown the problem to be greater than one of workable proportions. We illustrate the problems by examining some anomalous results in both voluntary contribution games and dictator games. We argue that there are difficulties with…
The Instability of Minimum Winning Coalitions
This paper examines William Riker's thesis that only minimum winning coalitions form in n-person zero-sum symmetric games. It demonstrates that Riker's conclusion is false by identifying the conditions under which larger than minimum winning coalitions can form. Since these conditions are quite general it indicates that Riker's conclusion is valid only for a highly restricted class of games. This class of games is identified as those in which pla…
Entrepreneurial Politics And Foreign Policy
While engineers, economists, and doctors can often prescribe a remedy for an undesirable situation by inference from a general theoretical construct, the architects of foreign policies rarely, if ever, have had such an advantage. Yet, the availability of a general theoretical construct could yield numerous benefits. To the degree that the theory were reliable and general, the foreign-policy maker would be able to deal with a wide range of concern…
Justice Preferences and the Arrow Problem
Arrow showed that there is no general way to aggregate non-interpersonally comparable preferences or welfare into either a sensible social choice or a social welfare measure. With majority rule the problem manifests itself as voting cycles. The standard response to this problem has been developing `spatial models' built on restricted preferences (or welfare). We develop an alternative family of solutions. By assuming a culturally accepted concept…
Assessing socioeconomic effects on different sized populations
OBJECTIVE: Researchers in health care often use ecological data from population aggregates of different sizes. This paper deals with a fundamental methodological issue relating to the use of such data. This study investigates the question of whether, in doing analyses involving different areas, the estimating equations should be weighted by the populations of those areas. It is argued that the correct answer to that question turns on some deep ep…
A Very Short History of Distributive Justice
Optimal Policies and Socially Oriented Behavior
An impartial reasoning solution to the prisoner's dilemma
Redistributive politics
A role for structured observation in ethics
When Is Universal Contribution Best for the Group
Social scientists from a variety of disciplines have long been captivated by the simplicity and elegance of the two-person, binary choice prisoners' dilemma (2 × 2 PD). Over the years, the domain of the research has been extended and applied to events that are neither two person nor binary. We use a defining characteristic of the 2 × 2 PD to identify situations under which full levels of contribution are suboptimal. We propose, on the basis of th…
Post election redistributive strategies of representatives
Ii. Dont Knock Griselda if You Denna Dig Millay
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
Ending the war in Vietnam, preventing similar conflicts elsewhere, solving the problems associated with the pollution of our environment, and securing a just domestic social order are among the most important political issues of our time. These issues have one characteristic in common: the securing (or non-securing) of these objectives will be shared by all citizens of the United States. Consequently, these and similar phenomena can be analyzed i…
To the Editor, Sociological Inquiry
Political Leadership and Collective Goods
Entrepreneurial Politics And Foreign Policy
While engineers, economists, and doctors can often prescribe a remedy for an undesirable situation by inference from a general theoretical construct, the architects of foreign policies rarely, if ever, have had such an advantage. Yet, the availability of a general theoretical construct could yield numerous benefits. To the degree that the theory were reliable and general, the foreign-policy maker would be able to deal with a wide range of concern…
An Introduction to Positive Political Theory. William H. Riker , Peter C. Ordeshook
The carrot and the stick
Self-Interest or Altruism, What Difference
This paper discusses the difficulties involved in relaxing the self-interest assumption as it is traditionally used in conjunction with the assumption of rationality. A formal model of altruistic behavior is developed and employed in the analysis of the problems of burden-sharing among rational allies. It is demonstrated that altruistic behavior among political actors is not, in general, sufficient to remove all areas of contention between the ac…
Individual Contributions for Collective Goods
There is a growing controversy as to what behavior is to be expected of individuals regarding contributions for the supply of collective goods. This paper attempts to settle some of the controversy. It attempts to do so not by showing that one of the positions taken is correct and the others wrong, but by showing that the various authors in question reach different conclusions about individual behavior in situations involving the potential supply…
The Instability of Minimum Winning Coalitions
This paper examines William Riker's thesis that only minimum winning coalitions form in n-person zero-sum symmetric games. It demonstrates that Riker's conclusion is false by identifying the conditions under which larger than minimum winning coalitions can form. Since these conditions are quite general it indicates that Riker's conclusion is valid only for a highly restricted class of games. This class of games is identified as those in which pla…
Modern Political Economy
A Test of Downsian Voter Rationality
Systematic testing of Downsian voter rationality is accomplished using a computer simulation technique on the 1964 SRC voting survey. The simulation tests both the hypotheses predicting whether an individual will vote and for whom an individual will vote. To evaluate the results of the tests we develop a statistic analogous to Pearson's r. This statistic measures the percentage improvement over a random guess technique. Utilizing this statistic, …
Forecasting
Post election redistributive strategies of representatives
Beyond Economic Man
The existence and prevalence of behavior inconsistent with economists' definition of self-interest is measured in an experimental context. Experimental situations involving choices with monetary payoffs are designed to induce preferences. The subjects' behaviors are used to measure the existence and intensity of various forms of motivation based on “interactive preference functions.” Explicitly, we test for altruistic, egalitarian, and difference…
Partisan Preference and Income Redistribution
The relationships between attitudes toward income redistribution and partisan preferences are examined and contrasted in Canadian and American samples of college students. In both samples evidence is found that there is a strong relationship between the variables among males and an absence of a relationship among females. In Canada, support for income redistribution is strongly positively correlated with support for the New Democratic party, posi…
Choices of Principles of Distributive Justice in Experimental Groups
Experimental methods involving imperfect information are used to generate group choices of principles of distributive justice. Conditions approximating John Rawls's original in A Theory of Justice serve as the starting point, and his conjectures are contrasted with those of John Harsanyi. Three predictions implicit in the Rawlsian argument are tested: (1) individuals choosing a principle of economic distribution would be able to reach unanimous a…
Laboratory Results on Rawls's Distributive Justice
The behavioural underpinnings of Rawls's notion of distributive justice as outlined inA Theory of Justiceare tested in experimental contexts. Under conditions approximating Rawls's ‘original position’ (including the appropriate agenda, a ‘veil of ignorance’ and a choice rule designed to capture his main theoretical constraints), we test his ‘predictions’ that individuals would reach a unanimous consensus on a principle of distributive justice and…
Redistributive politics
Choosing Justice in Experimental Democracies with Production
We examine in a laboratory setting how direct participation in choosing a principle of distributive justice and a tax system impinges on subjects' attitudes and subsequent productivity when they participate in a task, produce income, and then experience losses or gains according to the tax system. Experience with a redistributive principle and its associated taxation system in a production environment does not detract from overall acceptance of t…
Choosing Justice
An impartial reasoning solution to the prisoner's dilemma
A Population-Based Health Information System
The authors introduce the Population Health Information System, its conceptual framework, and the data elements required to implement such a system in other jurisdictions. Among other innovations, the Population Health Information System distinguishes between indicators of health status (outcomes measures) and indicators of need for health care (socioeconomic measures of risk for poor health). The system also can be used to perform needs-based pl…
Stability and Trends Over 3 Years of Data
Because the health status of a population does not usually respond immediately to interventions, whether social or medical, the ability to analyze change over time is important. Therefore, patterns of change and stability in health status and health care use of Manitoba residents during a 3-year period from 1990 to 1992 were analyzed using the Population-based Health Information System. This article presents summary findings and discusses methodo…
Socioeconomic Status and the Health of the Population
To examine the relationship of a population's socioeconomic characteristics to its health status and use of health care services, a composite socioeconomic risk index was developed for the Population Health Information System. From a set of 23 socioeconomic indicators derived from public use census data, a summary index was formed from six indicators to generate profiles for the eight health regions of the province. Regional scores were plotted a…
Economics (25 works) · Political science (25 works) · Computer Science (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Microeconomics (18 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (12 works) · Positive economics (11 works)