Attribution of Collective Causal Responsibility to Individual Actors in Stochastic Systems

26 Pages Posted: 23 Nov 2021 Last revised: 6 Mar 2023

See all articles by Christian Mittelstaedt

Christian Mittelstaedt

Chair of Environmental Economics and Resource Management

Stefan Baumgärtner

University of Freiburg - Department of Environment and Natural Resources

Date Written: February 16, 2023

Abstract

We develop an attribution of collective causal responsibility to individual actors in stochastic nonlinear systems: we take an existing measure of collective causal responsibility from Vallentyne (2008) and Baumgärtner (2020), introduce four elementary axioms on the attribution of collective responsibility to individuals, and propose a measure of individual causal responsibility that is uniquely implied by these axioms. Our approach is inspired by Shapley's (1953) fundamental concept of how to divide a collective effect into individual marginal contributions. The generic setting is a set of systems with potential regime shifts where actions affect the regime-shift probabilities -- e.g. technical systems, traffic systems, financial markets, managed ecosystems, or the Earth's climate system. This paper closes several gaps in the literature on responsibility attribution: our concept is intensive, has cardinal properties and allows for multiple actors with simultaneous actions. This is relevant for implementing efficient incentive schemes and liability for managers of stochastic systems.

Keywords: attribution, causal responsibility, probability, multiple actors, regime shift, systemic risk, Shapley-value

JEL Classification: K13, K32, Q50

Suggested Citation

Mittelstaedt, Christian and Baumgärtner, Stefan, Attribution of Collective Causal Responsibility to Individual Actors in Stochastic Systems (February 16, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3967091 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3967091

Christian Mittelstaedt (Contact Author)

Chair of Environmental Economics and Resource Management ( email )

Tennenbacher Str. 4
Freiburg, 79106
Germany

Stefan Baumgärtner

University of Freiburg - Department of Environment and Natural Resources ( email )

Tennebacher Str. 4
Freiburg, 79106
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.ere.uni-freiburg.de

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
76
Abstract Views
482
Rank
567,594
PlumX Metrics