IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Just Luck: An Experimental Study of Risk-Taking and Fairness

Author Info

  • Alexander W. Cappelen
  • James Konow
  • Erik ?. S?rensen
  • Bertil Tungodden

Abstract

Choices involving risk significantly affect the distribution of income and wealth in society. This paper reports the results of the first experiment, to our knowledge, to study fairness views about risktaking, specifically whether such views are based chiefly on ex ante opportunities or on ex post outcomes. We find that, even though many participants focus exclusively on ex ante opportunities, most favor some redistribution ex post. Many participants also make a distinction between ex post inequalities that reflect differences in luck and ex post inequalities that reflect differences in choices. These findings apply to both stakeholders and impartial spectators.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.103.4.1398
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/june2013/20100273_app.pdf
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/june2013/20100273_data.zip
Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Article provided by American Economic Association in its journal American Economic Review.

Volume (Year): 103 (2013)
Issue (Month): 4 (June)
Pages: 1398-1413

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:103:y:2013:i:4:p:1398-1413
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.4.1398
Contact details of provider: Web page: https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Order Information: Web: https://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
  • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
  • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as in new window
  1. Marc Fleurbaey, 2009. "Assessing risky social situations," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 27006, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  2. Vitezslav Babicky & Andreas Ortmann & Silvester Van Koten, 2010. "Fairness in Risky Environments: Theory and Evidence," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp419, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
  3. Hammond, Peter J, 1981. "Ex-ante and Ex-post Welfare Optimality under Uncertainty," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 48(191), pages 235-50, August.
  4. Fehr, Ernst & Schmidt, Klaus M., . "A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation," Chapters in Economics, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
  5. Vitezslav Babicky, 2003. "Fairness Under Risk: Insights from Dictator Games," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp217, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
  6. 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.
  7. Daniel J. Zizzo & Andrew J. Oswald, 2001. "Are People Willing to Pay to Reduce Others'Incomes?," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 63-64, pages 39-65.
  8. Charness, Gary & Rabin, Matthew, 2001. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt4qz9k8vg, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
  9. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63, pages 309.
  10. Donald W.K. Andrews, 1999. "Testing When a Parameter Is on the Boundary of the Maintained Hypothesis," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1229, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
  11. Brice Magdalou & Dimitri Dubois & Phu Nguyen-Van, 2009. "Risk and Inequality Aversion in Social Dilemmas," Working Papers 09, Development and Policies Research Center (DEPOCEN), Vietnam, revised Feb 2009.
  12. Geoffrey Brennan & Werner Güth & Luis G. Gonzalez & M. Vittoria Levati, 2005. "Attitudes toward Private and Collective Risks in Individual and Strategic Choice Situations," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2005-22, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
  13. 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.
  14. Krawczyk, Michal, 2010. "A glimpse through the veil of ignorance: Equality of opportunity and support for redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 131-141, February.
  15. 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.
  16. James Konow, 2000. "Fair Shares: Accountability and Cognitive Dissonance in Allocation Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1072-1091, September.
  17. 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.
  18. Jason F. Shogren, 1990. "Experiment on Coasian Bargaining over Ex Ante Lotteries and Ex Post Rewards, An," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications 90-wp63, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
  19. repec:adr:anecst:y:2001:i:63-64:p:04 is not listed on IDEAS
  20. Daniel John Zizzo, 2003. "Inequality and Procedural Fairness in a Money Burning and Stealing Experiment," Economics Series Working Papers 155, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
  21. Konow, James, 2006. "Is Fairness in the Eye of the Beholder? An Impartial Spectator Analysis of Justice," MPRA Paper 2730, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  22. Ernst R. Berndt & Bronwyn H. Hall & Robert E. Hall & Jerry A. Hausman, 1974. "Estimation and Inference in Nonlinear Structural Models," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 3, number 4, pages 653-665 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  23. Alexander Cappelen & Astri Hole & Erik Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2011. "The importance of moral reflection and self-reported data in a dictator game with production," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 36(1), pages 105-120, January.
  24. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2006. "A Liberal Egalitarian Paradox," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(03), pages 393-408, November.
  25. Zizzo, Daniel John, 2003. "Money burning and rank egalitarianism with random dictators," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 263-266, November.
  26. Alon Harel & Zvi Safra & Uzi Segal, 2003. "Ex-Post Egalitarianism," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 563, Boston College Department of Economics.
  27. James Konow & Tatsuyoshi Saijo & Kenju Akai, 2008. "Morals and Mores? Experimental Evidence on Equity and Equality from the US and Japan," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000002055, David K. Levine.
  28. Norman Frohlich & Joe Oppenheimer & Anja Kurki, 2004. "Modeling Other-Regarding Preferences and an Experimental Test," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 119(1_2), pages 91-117, 04.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:

  1. Just Luck: An Experimental Study of Risk-Taking and Fairness (AER 2013) in ReplicationWiki

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:103:y:2013:i:4:p:1398-1413. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Jane Voros)

or (Michael P. Albert)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.