Norman Frohlich

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 in terms of collective goods: goods that, if consumed by one member of a specified group, cannot be withheld from the other members. Indeed, much of politics can be seen to be concerned with the securing (or non-securing) of collective goods. The reason for this is well expressed by Mancur Olson:

Some doubts about measuring self-interest using dictator experiments: the costs of anonymity

Abstract Traditionally, economists have assumed self-interest governs economic choices. Recently, some social scientists and economists, especially those working in game theoretic and experimental areas, have begun to treat self-interest as a testable hypothesis. One important vehicle for evaluating self-interest has been a class of experiments called ‘dictator’ experiments. We believe that these experiments may have a flaw in their design which leads researchers to overstate, systematically , the role of self-interest in individuals’ motivations. Double-blind experiments, designed to create conditions of privacy and anonymity, may engender doubts in subjects regarding the existence of pairings and the disposition of any money they share. Moreover, subjects may view the experiment as a game. We test these conjectures using both traditional and modified dictator experiments.

A regional comparison of socioeconomic and health indices in a Canadian province

In most jurisdictions, information on socioeconomic attributes of geographic areas is readily available. As well, limited measures of health, such as mortality rates or indicators derived from health service use, are also routinely collected for geographically defined populations. In this paper we present a methodology for selecting and combining measures of area socioeconomic characteristics to produce a composite index which is relevant for health-related research. The performance of this composite index in this setting was consistent with deprivation indices developed in the United Kingdom, and showed strong associations with measures of population health status and health service utilization.

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND THE HEALTH OF THE POPULATION

To examine the relationship of a populations 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 against an index of health status measures and against measures of health care utilization. This article focuses on methodology and discusses preliminary analyses. Strong regional variations were found in all of these measures, and the socioeconomic risk index explained 87% to 92% of the differences in health status and acute hospitalizations. Moreover, regions with the worst health status on our indicators were found to be among the highest consumers of health services. The socioeconomic risk index appears to be a powerful tool in clarifying which benefits in improved health status might accrue from changing the underlying inequities in amenable socioeconomic risk factors, rather than simply increasing services to regions of low health status.

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 actors although the scope of disagreement is shown to be narrowed by altruistic behavior. Additional applications of the model of non-self-interested behavior are presented and suggested.

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 planning and challenge delivery patterns.

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 of collective goods because they make different assumptions regarding the nature of the goods and the nature of the situations in which the individuals find themselves. The different conclusions are reconciled by a careful examination of the assumptions of the authors. Specific variables are identified which account for the differences in the models and a set of dimensions along which collective goods situations can vary is presented.

Employee versus conventionally-owned and controlled firms: an experimental analysis

Full employee ownership, under which employees enjoy dominant ownership and control rights, is an innovation which alters the relationship between employees and the organization in which they work. Although it has been hypothesized to have a number of positive implications, it has suffered from poor diffusion and survival rates overall, and selection biases have limited the generalizability of field research. We have therefore attempted to develop experimental methods to test hypotheses about the effects of employee ownership on selected economic, social, and psychological outcomes. In our experiments, subjects in employee-owned firms exhibited higher productivity, perceived greater fairness in the pay they received and the method used to pay them, reported higher levels of involvement in their tasks, had more positive evaluations of their supervisors, and showed a greater propensity to interact with and provide assistance to their co-workers than did those in employee-owned firms. Four areas where further research is needed are identified; these will refine our understanding of employee ownership and the conditions under which it will operate as hypothesized.

Experiencing Impartiality to Invoke Fairness in the n-PD: Some Experimental Results

Subjects play a 5-person Prisoners Dilemma both from an impartial point of view and in a regular fashion to determine whether 1) Concerns for fairness increase cooperative behavior; 2) Play of a Prisoners Dilemma from an impartial point of view results in significantly higher levels of cooperation than does normal play; 3) Concern for fairness has greater explanatory force in explaining cooperation in impartial plays of the Prisoners Dilemma than in normal plays; and 4) Experience with impartial play of a Prisoners Dilemma sensitizes subjects to normative imperatives and results in higher levels of cooperation in subsequent normal plays of Prisoners Dilemmas. The first and second hypotheses are supported, the third is inverted, and the fourth is not supported. Concern for fairness is demonstrated to play a complex role in explaining cooperative behavior in regular plays of the game.An earlier version was presented at the Annual meetings of the Public Choice Society, 1993 Monteleone Hotel, New Orleans; 20 March 1993.

Assessing socioeconomic effects on different sized populations: To weight or not to weight?

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 epistemological issues that have been little considered in the public health literature. DESIGN To illustrate the issue, an example is presented that estimates entitlements to primary physician visits in Manitoba, Canada based on age/gender and socioeconomic status using both population weighted and unweighted regression analyses. SETTING AND SUBJECTS The entire population of the province furnish the data. Primary care visits to physicians based on administrative data, demographics and a measure of socioeconomic status (SERI), based on census data, constitute the measures. RESULTS Significant differences between weighted and unweighted analyses are shown to emerge, with the weighted analyses biasing entitlements towards the more populous and advantaged population. CONCLUSIONS The authors endorse the position that, in certain problems, data analyses involving population aggregates unweighted by population size are more appropriate and normatively justifiable than are analyses weighted by population. In particular, when the aggregated units make sense, theoretically, as units, it is more appropriate to carry out the analyses without weighting by the size of the units. Unweighted analyses yield more valid estimations.