Fairness, Effort and Identity: Re-Examining the Determinants of Redistribution Preferences

A large body of experimental literature has documented the relevance of endowment source in predicting behaviour in social interactions. Prior results and their theoretical underpinnings suggest that individuals prefer more equitable outcomes (more redistribution) when endowments are given rather than earned. However, to the best of our knowledge, all prior research on this topic has examined situations in which participant experience is symmetrical. Prior work has looked at cases in which all parties either earned or were given their income, or in which all parties have both earned and unearned income (even when they are individually exposed to the risk of losing some of the earned income). Instead, we propose to study preferences over redistribution in a situation in which some individuals earn their income through effort and time while others receive their income purely through luck using a method that is salient to both groups. We propose to use our novel design to better capture the role that ``fairness’‘ of the system plays in determining redistributive preferences (by studying a more realistic environment in which method of earnings vary across individuals instead of across environments).