IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bsu/wpaper/200505.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Position and Distributive Justice: Experimental Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Kurtis Swope

    (Department of Economics, United States Naval Academy)

  • John Cadigan

    (Department of Public Administration, American University)

  • Pamela Schmitt

    (Department of Economics, United States Naval Academy)

  • Robert S. Shupp

    (Department of Economics, Ball State University)

Abstract

In a simple double-blind dictator experiment, systematically removing subjects’ levels of power and entitlement increases their choice of an income distribution generally consistent with Rawls (1971) concept of distributive justice, although choices are less unanimous and risk-averse than hypothesized

Suggested Citation

  • Kurtis Swope & John Cadigan & Pamela Schmitt & Robert S. Shupp, 2005. "Social Position and Distributive Justice: Experimental Evidence," Working Papers 200505, Ball State University, Department of Economics, revised Jun 2005.
  • Handle: RePEc:bsu:wpaper:200505
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200505swope.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2005
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hoffman Elizabeth & McCabe Kevin & Shachat Keith & Smith Vernon, 1994. "Preferences, Property Rights, and Anonymity in Bargaining Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 346-380, November.
    2. Edi Karni & Tim Salmon & Barry Sopher, 2008. "Individual sense of fairness: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(2), pages 174-189, June.
    3. Grzegorz Lissowski & Tadeusz Tyszka & Wlodzimierz Okrasa, 1991. "Principles of Distributive Justice," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(1), pages 98-119, March.
    4. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    5. David K. Levine, 1998. "Modeling Altruism and Spitefulness in Experiment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(3), pages 593-622, July.
    6. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    7. Todd L. Cherry & Peter Frykblom & Jason F. Shogren, 2002. "Hardnose the Dictator," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1218-1221, September.
    8. Ruffle, Bradley J., 1998. "More Is Better, But Fair Is Fair: Tipping in Dictator and Ultimatum Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 247-265, May.
    9. Rena dela Cruz-Doña & Alan Martina, 2000. "Diverse Groups Agreeing on a System of Justice in Distribution: Evidence from the Philippines," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 11(1), pages 35-76, January.
    10. Frohlich, Norman & Oppenheimer, Joe A., 1990. "Choosing Justice in Experimental Democracies with Production," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(2), pages 461-477, June.
    11. Frohlich, Norman & Oppenheimer, Joe A. & Eavey, Cheryl L., 1987. "Laboratory Results on Rawls's Distributive Justice," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(1), pages 1-21, January.
    12. Vyrastekova, J. & Onderstal, A.M., 2005. "The Trust Game Behind the Veil of Ignorance : A Note on Gender Differences," Other publications TiSEM e07294af-b17a-4149-bb44-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    13. Kaisa Herne & Maria Suojanen, 2004. "The Role of Information in Choices Over Income Distributions," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(2), pages 173-193, April.
    14. Harrison, Glenn W & McCabe, Kevin A, 1996. "Expectations and Fairness in a Simple Bargaining Experiment," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 25(3), pages 303-327.
    15. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    16. Cherry, Todd L., 2001. "Mental accounting and other-regarding behavior: Evidence from the lab," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 605-615, October.
    17. Murnighan, J. Keith & Oesch, John M. & Pillutla, Madan, 2001. "Player Types and Self-Impression Management in Dictatorship Games: Two Experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 388-414, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wolf, Stephan & Dron, Cameron, 2020. "The effect of an experimental veil of ignorance on intergenerational resource sharing: empirical evidence from a sequential multi-person dictator game," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    2. Kaisa Herne & Jari K Hietanen & Olli Lappalainen & Esa Palosaari, 2022. "The influence of role awareness, empathy induction and trait empathy on dictator game giving," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-19, March.
    3. Erin L. Krupka & Roberto A. Weber, 2013. "Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 495-524, June.
    4. Christiane Bradler, 2009. "Social Preferences under Risk - An Experimental Analysis," Jena Economics Research Papers 2009-022, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    2. Pamela Jakiela & Edward Miguel & Vera Velde, 2015. "You’ve earned it: estimating the impact of human capital on social preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 385-407, September.
    3. Grimalday, Gianluca & Karz, Anirban & Proto, Eugenio, 2012. "Everyone Wants a Chance: Initial Positions and Fairness in Ultimatum Games," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 93, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    4. Croson, Rachel & Konow, James, 2009. "Social preferences and moral biases," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 201-212, March.
    5. Oxoby, Robert J. & Spraggon, John, 2008. "Mine and yours: Property rights in dictator games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 703-713, March.
    6. Luigi Mittone & Matteo Ploner, 2006. "Is It Just Legitimacy of Endowments? An Experimental Analysis of Unilateral Giving," CEEL Working Papers 0602, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    7. Franzen, Axel & Pointner, Sonja, 2012. "Anonymity in the dictator game revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 74-81.
    8. Astrid Dannenberg & Thomas Riechmann & Bodo Sturm & Carsten Vogt, 2012. "Inequality aversion and the house money effect," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(3), pages 460-484, September.
    9. Croson, Rachel & Konow, James, 2007. "Double Standards: Social Preferences and Moral Biases," MPRA Paper 2729, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Eckel, Catherine & Gintis, Herbert, 2010. "Blaming the messenger: Notes on the current state of experimental economics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 109-119, January.
    11. Gerald Eisenkopf, 2018. "Unequal Incentives and Perceived Fairness in Groups," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-18, September.
    12. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2018. "Welfare-Based Altruism," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 89, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    13. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2022. "Fairness-based Altruism," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 666, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    14. Barmettler, Franziska & Fehr, Ernst & Zehnder, Christian, 2012. "Big experimenter is watching you! Anonymity and prosocial behavior in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 17-34.
    15. Heinz, Matthias & Juranek, Steffen & Rau, Holger A., 2012. "Do women behave more reciprocally than men? Gender differences in real effort dictator games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 105-110.
    16. Cetre, Sophie & Lobeck, Max & Senik, Claudia & Verdier, Thierry, 2019. "Preferences over income distribution: Evidence from a choice experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    17. Cox, James C. & Friedman, Daniel & Gjerstad, Steven, 2007. "A tractable model of reciprocity and fairness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 17-45, April.
    18. Greiner, Ben & Vittoria Levati, M., 2005. "Indirect reciprocity in cyclical networks: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 711-731, October.
    19. Bart J. Wilson, 2012. "Contra Private Fairness," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(2), pages 407-435, April.
    20. David B. Johnson & Jonathan Rogers, 2023. "First You Get the Money, Then You Get the Power: The Effect of Cheating on Altruism," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-21, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Power; entitlement; justice; experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bsu:wpaper:200505. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tung Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debsuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.