A variety of decisions seem to require resort to a coin toss, die roll, or the drawing of straws?in other words, a fair lottery. This raises the question of what features distinguish fair lotteries from alternative procedures. ...

In 1997, I was a graduate student in the Political Science Department at the University of Rochester. Like most graduate students, I was always on the lookout for ways to earn a little extra money. For this reason, I became ...

When James Watson and Francis Crick submitted to Nature their groundbreaking paper relating DNA structure to protein synthesis, they faced a choice. In what order were their names to be listed? Would it be ?Watson and ...

Philosophers and social scientists have offered a variety of arguments for making certain types of decisions by lot. This paper examines three such arguments. These arguments identify indeterminacy, fairness and incentive ...