Aversión a la desigualdad centrada o no autocentrada: Evidencia en base a cuestionario experimental para Uruguay

The aim of this paper is to contribute evidence on the empirical relevance of two notions of inequality aversion that has been explored by the Economic literature: self-centered and nonself-centered inequality aversion. We used a more flexible model and designed an experimental survey which allowed us to distinguish these two notions of aversion to inequality. The strategy was carried out on a sample of first-year University students (Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administration, Uruguay). To the best of our knowledge, there are no previous papers that have jointly addressed both of those notions of inequality aversion and contributed evidence on the empirical relevance of that distinction. The present paper contributes original evidence for a developing country, which confirms the relevance of both notions of aversion to inequality. Most participants present non-self-centered inequality aversion, and a minority appear to be inequality-lovers. For most individuals, the magnitude associated with this notion of aversion to inequality is very sensitive to the individual's position in the income distribution. The selfcentered notion summarizes various effects, which is manifested in the fact that the magnitude of the parameters is more heterogeneous. In a minority, the effect on non-self-centered aversion dominates, with individuals being more willing to pay to reduce inequality. Finally, not considering both notions together can induce a bias in the measurement of inequality aversion.