Under a veil of ignorance, risk-neutral voters act as the average voter

Evidence

This result follows from risk-neutrality and the utilitarian nature of the maximization problem in (3) but it extends to more general distributions of idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks on preferences, as we show in Appendix. The intuition is as follows13. Suppose there were only two alternatives, x and y to be chosen between ex post. Ex ante the individuals in the constituency (of size normalized to 1) are under the veil of ignorance and do not know whether they will prefer x or y. Suppose k is the number of individuals that prefer x to y. — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 71

Obviously for bλ−λ−lM > A the reform would never pass, while for bλ−λ−lM < −A the reform would always pass. The first two terms in (3) represent the expected benefits of the socially efficient reform (multiplied by the exogenouslygiven probability of such an event, p), the second the expropriation. Note that ex ante behind a veil of ignorance and with risk neutrality the generic voter acts as the “average” voter. — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 65

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The equivalence between an individual behind a veil of ignorance and the ‘average’ voter generalizes beyond the specific model, holding for broad shock distributions.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 71; Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 65