Incomplete Social Contracts
There is a long normative 'Social Contract' tradition that attempts to characterize ex-post income in equalities that are agreeable to all 'behind a veil of ignorance.' This paper takes a similar normative approach to characterize social decision-making procedures. It is shown that quite generally some form of majority-voting is preferred to unanimity 'behind a veil of ignorance' whenever society faces dead weight costs in making compensating transfers.