NEEDS VERSUS ENTITLEMENTS—AN INTERNATIONAL FAIRNESS EXPERIMENT
What is the relative importance of needs, entitlements, and nationality in people's social preferences? To study this question, we conducted a real-effort dictator experiment where students in two of the world's richest countries, Norway and Germany, were matched directly with students in...
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| Published in: | Journal of the European Economic Association Vol. 11; no. 3; pp. 574 - 598 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford
Wiley-Blackwell
01-06-2013
Oxford University Press |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | What is the relative importance of needs, entitlements, and nationality in people's social preferences? To study this question, we conducted a real-effort dictator experiment where students in two of the world's richest countries, Norway and Germany, were matched directly with students in two of the world's poorest countries, Uganda and Tanzania. The experimental design made the participants face distributive situations where different moral motives came into play, and based on the observed behavior we estimate a social preference model focusing on how people make trade-offs between entitlements, needs, and self-interest. The study provides four main findings. First, entitlement considerations are crucial in explaining distributive behavior in the experiment; second, needs considerations matter a lot for some participants; third, the participants acted as moral cosmopolitans and did not assign importance to nationality in their distributive choices; and, finally, the participants' choices are consistent with a self-serving bias in their social preferences. |
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| Bibliography: | Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Ingvild Almås, Jofrey Amanyise, Sigbjørn Birkeland, Sara Cools, Brigt Erland, Sebastian Hajok, Ricky Halvorsen, Karen Evelyn Hauge, Lucas Katera, Blandina Kilama, Wietze Lindeboom, Juanita Mangóngó, James Muwanga, Zephaniah Muzira, Carol Namagembe, Vincent Sajabi, Silje Sandstad, Grace Ssekakubo, Inga Søreide, and Fredrik Willumsen for their excellent research assistance. The financial assistance of a research grant from the Research Council of Norway and the laboratory support of Sonderforschungsbereich 504 at the University of Mannheim, Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA) center in Dar es Salaam, and Makerere University are also recognized. The paper is part of a larger joint project between the experimental research group at the Department of Economics, NHH Norwegian School of Economics and the Equality, Social Organization, and Performance (ESOP) center at the Department of Economics at the University of Oslo. ESOP is supported by the Research Council of Norway. The authors gratefully acknowledge the extremely valuable comments and suggestions from editor Stefano DellaVigna and three anonymous referees. In addition, the paper has benefited from helpful comments from Geir Asheim, Marco Faravelli, Tore Ellingsen, Marc Fleurbaey, Hans K. Hvide, James Konow, and Helmut Rainer. . The editor in charge of this paper was Stefano DellaVigna ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1542-4766 1542-4774 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/jeea.12000 |