IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v49y2013i5p737-753.html

Theft in South Africa: An Experiment to Examine the Influence of Racial Identity and Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Clinton J. Pecenka
  • Godfrey Kundhlande

Abstract

This article uses a dictator game to determine the impact of racial identity and inequality on theft in South Africa. A dictator can take money from a receiver's endowment. The money vulnerable to theft is constant across groups, and there is no threat of punishment. Any differential in the amount taken is due to considerations of the racial identity of the potential victim or to variation in receiver endowments. The results provide weak evidence that theft is impacted by inequality. However, racial identity significantly influences theft decisions. Contrary to expectations, black participants take 15 per cent more from other black participants.

Suggested Citation

  • Clinton J. Pecenka & Godfrey Kundhlande, 2013. "Theft in South Africa: An Experiment to Examine the Influence of Racial Identity and Inequality," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(5), pages 737-753, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:49:y:2013:i:5:p:737-753
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2012.754431
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2012.754431
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2012.754431?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ashraf, Nava & Bohnet, Iris & Piankov, Nikita, 2003. "Is Trust a Bad Investment?," Working Paper Series rwp03-047, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. repec:rza:wpaper:211 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Jakiela, Pamela, 2015. "How fair shares compare: Experimental evidence from two cultures," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 40-54.
    4. Carter, Michael R. & Castillo, Marco, 2003. "An Experimental Approach to Social Capital in South Africa," Staff Paper Series 448, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    5. Simon Halliday, 2011. "Rarer Actions: Giving and Taking in Third-Party Punishment Games," SALDRU Working Papers 62, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph Engel, 2016. "Experimental Criminal Law. A Survey of Contributions from Law, Economics and Criminology," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics 2016_07, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.
    2. Marco Faillo & Matteo Rizzolli & Stephan Tontrup, 2016. "Thou shalt not steal (from hard-working people)An experiment on respect for property claims," Econometica Working Papers wp58, Econometica.
    3. Faillo, Marco & Rizzolli, Matteo & Tontrup, Stephan, 2019. "Thou shalt not steal: Taking aversion with legal property claims," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 88-101.
    4. Bonick, Matthew & Farfan-Vallespin, Antonio, 2018. "The Reversal of Fortune, Extractive Institution and the Historical Roots of Racism," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181569, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Chisadza, Carolyn & Nicholls, Nicky & Yitbarek, Eleni, 2021. "Group identity in fairness decisions: Discrimination or inequality aversion?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    6. Clinton J. Pecenka & Godfrey Kundhlande, 2014. "Theft, Gift-Giving, and Reciprocity: A South African Experiment," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(11), pages 1467-1481, November.
    7. Gamel Abdul-Nasser Salifu, 2021. "Spousal Secret Affairs with Money: Intra-household Allocative Efficiency in Spaces of Gender Politics in Development," International Journal of Business Administration, International Journal of Business Administration, Sciedu Press, vol. 12(3), pages 108-123, May.
    8. Tom Lane, 2015. "Discrimination in the laboratory: a meta-analysis," Discussion Papers 2015-03, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    9. Bonick, Matthew & Farfán-Vallespín, Antonio, 2016. "On the origin and consequences of racism," The Constitutional Economics Network Working Papers 02-2016, University of Freiburg, Department of Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Burns, Justine, 2006. "Racial stereotypes, stigma and trust in post-apartheid South Africa," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 805-821, September.
    2. Justine Burns, 2004. "Race and trust in post-apartheid South Africa," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 078, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    3. Maertens, Annemie & Wollni, Meike & Wei, Jaizhu & Li, Lingzhi & Zhou, Li, 2023. "Reducing antibiotics: Evidence from an Experiment among Poultry Farmers in China," 2023 Annual Meeting, July 23-25, Washington D.C. 335494, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Pamela Jakiela & Edward Miguel & Vera Velde, 2015. "You’ve earned it: estimating the impact of human capital on social preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 385-407, September.
    5. Ingela Alger & Laura Juarez & Miriam Juarez-Torres & Josepa Miquel-Florensa, 2020. "Do Informal Transfers Induce Lower Efforts? Evidence from Lab-in-the-Field Experiments in Rural Mexico," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 69(1), pages 107-171.
    6. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Cappelen, Cornelius & Tungodden, Bertil, 2018. "Second-best fairness under Limited information: The trade-off between false positives and false negatives," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 18/2018, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    7. Naef, Michael & Schupp, Jürgen, 2009. "Measuring Trust: Experiments and Surveys in Contrast and Combination," IZA Discussion Papers 4087, IZA Network @ LISER.
    8. Rawadee Jarungrattanapong & Suparee Boonmanunt, 2020. "Collective action and other-regarding behavior: an assessment of games vs reality in Thailand," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 22(4), pages 485-507, October.
    9. Nathan Nunn, 2012. "Culture and the Historical Process," Economic History of Developing Regions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(S1), pages 108-126.
    10. Howe, E. Lance & Murphy, James J. & Gerkey, Drew & Stoddard, Olga B. & West, Colin Thor, 2023. "Sharing, social norms, and social distance: Experimental evidence from Russia and Western Alaska," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 345-358.
    11. Strobl, Renate & Wunsch, Conny, 2018. "Risky Choices and Solidarity: Why Experimental Design Matters," Working papers 2018/17, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    12. Alm, James & Torgler, Benno, 2006. "Culture differences and tax morale in the United States and in Europe," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 224-246, April.
    13. Hamza Umer & Yanjun Li, 2024. "Positive and negative health events and trust," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 459-479, May.
    14. Tausch, Franziska & Potters, Jan & Riedl, Arno, 2013. "Preferences for redistribution and pensions. What can we learn from experiments?," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(3), pages 298-325, July.
    15. Alvin Etang Ndip & David Fielding & Stephen Knowles, 2007. "Survey Trust, Experimental Trust and ROSCA Membership in Rural Cameroon," Working Papers 0713, University of Otago, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2007.
    16. Pedro Rey-Biel & Roman Sheremeta & Neslihan Uler, 2018. "When Income Depends on Performance and Luck: The Effects of Culture and Information on Giving," Research in Experimental Economics, in: Experimental Economics and Culture, volume 20, pages 167-203, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    17. Janssens, Wendy, 2010. "Women's Empowerment and the Creation of Social Capital in Indian Villages," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 974-988, July.
    18. Anna Hochleitner, 2022. "Fairness in times of crisis: Negative shocks, relative income and preferences for redistribution," Discussion Papers 2022-08, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    19. Sascha Fullbrunn & Katharina Richwien & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2011. "Trust and Trustworthiness in Anonymous Virtual Worlds," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(1), pages 48-63.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:49:y:2013:i:5:p:737-753. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.