Subjective Uncertainty and Structures of Social Planning

经济学家区分了经济环境状况的不确定性和经济主体对与其交互的主体的决策或计划行动的不确定性(主观不确定性和内生不确定性)。传统的一般均衡模型排除了后一种类型的不确定性，或者通过一些人为的假设将其降低到社会无关紧要的水平。放松这些假设意味着必须认真对待非均衡选择的可能性，既作为一种客观可能性，也作为经济主体认可的一种可能性；这反过来又为将某些制度和做法作为结构铺平了道路，这些结构是从代理人应对由此产生的不确定性的尝试演变而来的。这些制度和实践就是森萨特博士所说的“物化”(使具体成为一个抽象的概念)。物化可以被批评为实践理性的社会特定障碍。根据这笔拨款，森萨特博士将按照以下方式重建这一社会物化理论：首先，物化的社会结构将被描述为特定于社会的反应模式，以应对代理人对与其互动的其他代理人的行动所经历的“主观不确定性”。这种描述一方面将物化与某些博弈论均衡联系起来，另一方面又与一般均衡理论中的所谓“太阳黑子”均衡联系在一起。这些联系将揭示物化结构以最佳方式解决主观不确定性的能力的内在局限性。第二，将界定社会规划结构，并在可行性、效率和激励相容方面与具体化结构进行比较。第三，新的物化概念将被用于对剥削的批判，因为它基于理性代理的理想，而不是分配正义的主张。该项目承诺增加我们对社会背景下理性代理的性质、经济计划和市场的兼容性和相对优点以及剥削性社会关系的性质的理解。

Economists have distinguished between uncertainty about the state of economic environment and uncertainty of economic agents about the decisions or planned actions of agents with whom they are interacting (subjective and endogenous uncertainty). Traditional general equilibrium models preclude this latter type of uncertainty or reduce it to socially inconsequential levels through a number of artificial assumptions. Relaxing these assumptions means that the possibility of disequilibrium choices has to be taken seriously, both as an objective possibility and as a possibility countenanced by economic agents; this in turn paves the way for accounts of certain institutions and practices as structures which evolve out of agents' attempts to cope with the resulting uncertainty. These institutions and practices are what Dr. Sensat calls a "reification" (making concrete an abstract idea). Reification can be criticized as a socially specific barrier to practical rationality. Under this grant, Dr. Sensat will reconstruct this thesis of social reification as follows: First, social structures of reification will be characterized as socially specific modes of response to the "subjective uncertainty" experienced by agents about the actions of other agents with whom they are interacting. The characterization will connect reification with certain game- theoretic equilibria on the one hand and with the so-called "sunspot" equilibria of general equilibrium theory on the other. these connections will reveal inherent limitations to the ability of structures of reification to resolve subjective uncertainty in an optimal way. Second, structures of social planning will be defined and compared with structures of reification with respect to feasibility, efficiency and incentive compatibility. Third, the new concept of reification will be used in a critique of exploitation as based on an ideal of rational agency rather than a claim of distributive justice. The project promises to increase our understanding of the nature of rational agency in social contexts, the compatibility and relative merits of economic planning and markets, and the nature of exploitative social relationships.