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Misperceiving Economic Success: Experimental Evidence on Meritocratic Beliefs and Inequality Acceptance

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  • Dietmar Fehr
  • Martin Vollmann

Abstract

Meritocratic beliefs are often invoked as justification of inequality. We provide evidence on how meritocratic beliefs are shaped by economic status and how they contribute to the moral justification of inequality. In a large-scale survey experiment in the US, we show that success causes a change in beliefs about success depending on effort rather than luck. Exploiting exogenous variation in meritocratic beliefs in a two-stage analysis shows that beliefs affect how much inequality people accept. Successful people prefer to remain ignorant about the true underlying reasons for success and there is no evidence that beliefs are moderated by political orientation.

Suggested Citation

  • Dietmar Fehr & Martin Vollmann, 2022. "Misperceiving Economic Success: Experimental Evidence on Meritocratic Beliefs and Inequality Acceptance," CESifo Working Paper Series 9983, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9983
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    Cited by:

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    2. Kishishita, Daiki & Yamagishi, Atsushi & Matsumoto, Tomoko, 2023. "Overconfidence, income-ability gap, and preferences for income equality," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. Tongzhe Li & Bradley J. Ruffle, 2023. "Voting for income redistribution in a dynamic-income experiment," Department of Economics Working Papers 2023-02, McMaster University.
    4. Herzog, Sabrina & Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah & Trieu, Chi & Willrodt, Jana, 2023. "Who is in favor of affirmative action? Representative evidence from an experiment and a survey," DICE Discussion Papers 409, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    5. Sabrina Herzog & Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch & Chi Trieu & Jana Willrodt, 2023. "Who Is in Favor of Affirmative Action? Representative Evidence from an Experiment and a Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 10822, CESifo.
    6. Michele Bernasconi & Enrico Longo & Valeria Maggian, 2023. "When merit breeds luck (or not): an experimental study on distributive justice," Working Papers 2023:02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    meritocratic beliefs; inequality acceptance; fairness; political views; survey experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

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