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Economic status and acknowledgement of earned entitlement

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  • Barr, Abigail
  • Burns, Justine
  • Miller, Luis
  • Shaw, Ingrid

Abstract

We present a series of experiments that investigates whether tendencies to acknowledge entitlement owing to effort and productivity are associated with within-society economic status. Each participant played a four-person dictator game under one of two treatments, under one initial endowments were earned, under the other they were randomly assigned. The experiments were conducted in the United Kingdom, and South Africa. In both locations we found that relatively well-off individuals make allocations to others that reflect those others’ initial endowments more when those endowments were earned rather than random; among relatively poor individuals this was not the case.

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  • Barr, Abigail & Burns, Justine & Miller, Luis & Shaw, Ingrid, 2015. "Economic status and acknowledgement of earned entitlement," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 55-68.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:118:y:2015:i:c:p:55-68
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.02.012
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    Cited by:

    1. David Macro & Jeroen Weesie, 2016. "Inequalities between Others Do Matter: Evidence from Multiplayer Dictator Games," Games, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 7(2), pages 1-23, April.
    2. Gaudeul, Alexia & Keser, Claudia, 2017. "The social preferences of democratically elected decision makers and the conflict between wealth generation and distribution," Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research Discussion Papers 327, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    3. Javier Olivera, 2015. "Preferences for redistribution in Europe," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-18, December.
    4. Paetzel, Fabian & Sausgruber, Rupert, 2018. "Cognitive ability and in-group bias: An experimental study," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 280-292.
    5. Tobias Cagala & Ulrich Glogowsky & Veronika Grimm & Johannes Rincke, 2017. "Public Goods Provision with Rent-Extracting Administrators," CESifo Working Paper Series 6801, CESifo.
    6. Maité Laméris & Richard Jong-A-Pin & Rasmus Wiese, 2018. "An experimental test of the validity of survey-measured political ideology," Working Papers CEB 18-025, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    7. Choi, Syngjoo & Kim, Byung-Yeon & Lee, Jungmin & Lee, Sokbae, 2020. "A tale of two Koreas: Property rights and fairness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 112-130.
    8. Lea Cassar & Arnd H. Klein, 2019. "A Matter of Perspective: How Failure Shapes Distributive Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(11), pages 5050-5064, November.
    9. Fehr, Dietmar, 2018. "Is increasing inequality harmful? Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 123-134.
    10. Winter, Fabian & Rauhut, Heiko & Miller, Luis, 2018. "Dynamic Bargaining and Normative Conflict," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 112-126.
    11. Lea Cassar & Arnd H. Klein, 2017. "A Matter of Perspective: How Experience Shapes Preferences for Redistribution," CESifo Working Paper Series 6302, CESifo.
    12. Feltovich, Nick, 2019. "Is earned bargaining power more fully exploited?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 152-180.
    13. Maite D. Laméris & Richard Jong-A-Pin & Rasmus Wiese, 2018. "An Experimental Test of the Validity of Survey-Measured Political Ideology," CESifo Working Paper Series 7139, CESifo.
    14. Fries, Tilman & Parra, Daniel, 2020. "Because I (don't) deserve it: Entitlement and lying behavior," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Ethics and Behavioral Economics SP II 2020-401, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    15. Larney, Andrea & Rotella, Amanda & Barclay, Pat, 2019. "Stake size effects in ultimatum game and dictator game offers: A meta-analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 61-72.
    16. Marja-Liisa Halko & Topi Miettinen, 2017. "From ideals to deals—The effect of impartiality experience on stakeholder behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-16, August.
    17. Tobias Cagala & Ulrich Glogowsky & Veronika Grimm & Johannes Rincke, 2019. "Public Goods Provision with Rent-extracting Administrators," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(620), pages 1593-1617.
    18. Barr, Abigail & Miller, Luis, 2020. "The effect of education, income inequality and merit on inequality acceptance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    19. Paetzel, Fabian & Sausgruber, Rupert, 2017. "Entitlements and Loyalty in Groups: An Experimental Study," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168224, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. repec:gam:jgames:v:7:y:2016:i:2:p:11:d:68042 is not listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Distributive justice; Inequality; Laboratory experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

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