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Rich meets Poor - An International Fairness Experiment

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Author Info

  • Alexander W. Cappelen

    () (Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen)

  • Karl Ove Moene

    () (University of Oslo)

  • Erik �. S�rensen

    () (VU University Amsterdam)

  • Bertil Tungodden

    () (Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, and Chr. Michelsen Institute)

Abstract

Why do people in rich countries not transfer more of their income to people in the world's poorest countries? To study this question and the relative importance of needs, entitlements, and nationality in people's social preferences, we conducted a real effort fairness experiment where people in two of the world's richest countries, Norway and Germany, interacted directly with people in Uganda and Tanzania, two of the world's poorest countries. In this experiment, the participants were given the opportunity to transfer money to poor persons with whom they were matched. The study provides four main findings. First, entitlement considerations are crucial in explaining the distributive behavior of rich people in the experiment; second, needs considerations matter a lot for some participants; third, the participants acted as moral cosmopolitans; and finally, the participants' choices are consistent with a self-serving bias in their social preferences.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Tinbergen Institute in its series Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers with number 08-098/3.

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Date of creation: 14 Oct 2008
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Handle: RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20080098

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Web page: http://www.tinbergen.nl

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Keywords: fairness; experiments;

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References

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  1. Dirk Engelmann & Martin Strobel, 2004. "Inequality Aversion, Efficiency, and Maximin Preferences in Simple Distribution Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 857-869, September.
  2. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 1996. "Altruism in Anonymous Dictator Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 181-191, October.
  3. Alexander W. Cappelen & Astri Drange Hole & Erik Ø Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2007. "The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 818-827, June.
  4. Alexander W. Cappelen & Bertil Tungodden, 2002. "Responsibility and Reward," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 59(1), pages 120-, February.
  5. Fleurbaey, Marc, 2012. "Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653591, February.
  6. Christopher Ferrall, 2005. "Solving Finite Mixture Models: Efficient Computation in Economics Under Serial and Parallel Execution," Computational Economics, Society for Computational Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 343-379, June.
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Cited by:
  1. Ben D'Exelle & Arno Riedl, 2010. "Directed Generosity and Network Formation: Network Dimension Matters," CESifo Working Paper Series 3287, CESifo Group Munich.
  2. Ismael Rodriguez-Lara & Luis Moreno-Garrido, 2012. "Modeling Inequity Aversion in a Dictator Game with Production," Games, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 3(4), pages 138-149, October.

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