IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00736243.html

Income Redistribution and Public Good Provision: An Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Maurice

    (MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - UM2 - Université Montpellier 2 - Sciences et Techniques - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School)

  • Agathe Rouaix

    (LAMETA - Laboratoire Montpelliérain d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier)

  • Marc Willinger

    (LAMETA - Laboratoire Montpelliérain d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier)

Abstract

We investigate experimentally the relevance of Warr's neutrality theorem (1983). In our test treatments we implement an unexpected income redistribution among group members. We compare treatments with equalizing (unequalizing) redistribution to benchmark treatments without redistribution, starting either with an equal or unequal income distribution. Our data are consistent with the neutrality theorem: redistribution (either equalizing or unequalizing) does not affect the amount of voluntarily provided public good. However at the individual level we observe that subjects tend to under-adjust with respect to the predicted Nash-adjustment. We also observe an insignificant adjustment asymmetry between the poor and the rich: after redistribution subjects who become poorer lower their contribution by a larger amount than subjects who become richer increase their contribution. Finally we also observe a general tendency for poor subjects to over-contribute significantly more than rich subjects.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Maurice & Agathe Rouaix & Marc Willinger, 2009. "Income Redistribution and Public Good Provision: An Experiment," Post-Print hal-00736243, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00736243
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kamei, Kenju, 2014. "Promoting Competition or Helping Less-Endowed? An Experiment on Collective Institutional Choices under Intra-Group Inequality," MPRA Paper 56774, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Philipp E. Otto & Friedel Bolle, 2016. "Organizational power: Should remuneration heterogeneity mirror hierarchy?," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 20(3), pages 187-205, September.
    3. Abhijit Ramalingam & Brock V. Stoddard, 2021. "Does reducing inequality increase cooperation?​," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2021_022, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.
    4. Feng, Jun & Saijo, Tatsuyoshi & Shen, Junyi & Qin, Xiangdong, 2018. "Instability in the voluntary contribution mechanism with a quasi-linear payoff function: An experimental analysis," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 67-77.
    5. Agathe Rouaix & Charles Figuières & Marc Willinger, 2015. "The trade-off between welfare and equality in a public good experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(3), pages 601-623, October.
    6. Tatsuyoshi Saijo, 2014. "The instability of the voluntary contribution mechanism," Working Papers SDES-2014-3, Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management, revised Oct 2014.
    7. Ramalingam, Abhijit & Stoddard, Brock V., 2024. "Does reducing inequality increase cooperation?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 170-183.
    8. Roman M. Sheremeta & Neslihan Uler, 2021. "The impact of taxes and wasteful government spending on giving," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 355-386, June.
    9. Kenju Kamei, 2018. "Promoting Competition or Helping the Less Endowed? Distributional Preferences and Collective Institutional Choices under Intragroup Inequality," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 62(3), pages 626-655, March.
    10. Keser, Claudia & Markstädter, Andreas & Schmidt, Martin & Schnitzler, Cornelius, 2014. "Social costs of inequality: Heterogeneous endowments in public-good experiments," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 217, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    11. Corazzini, Luca & Cotton, Christopher S. & Longo, Enrico & Reggiani, Tommaso, 2024. "Coordinated selection of collective action: Wealthy-interest bias and inequality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    12. Kamei, Kenju & Ashworth, John, 2023. "Peer learning in teams and work performance: Evidence from a randomized field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 413-432.
    13. Yilong Xu & Ginevra Marandola, 2023. "The (negative) effects of inequality on Social Capital," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 1562-1588, December.
    14. Tatsuyoshi Saijo, 2015. "The sandwich property in the voluntary contribution mechanism:The instability approach," Working Papers SDES-2015-13, Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management, revised Mar 2015.
    15. Johnson, Caroline E. & Kecinski, Maik, 2025. "Inequity aversion, mandates, and the provision of threshold public goods," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    16. Abhijit Ramalingam & Brock V. Stoddard, 2020. "Old habits die hard: The experience of inequality and persistence of low cooperation," Working Papers 20-07, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    17. Rémi Suchon & Vincent Théroude, 2025. "Cooperation across the inequality divide: the effect of the magnitude of inequality," Working Papers of BETA 2025-15, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    18. Greiff, Matthias & Kempa, Karol, 2025. "Avoiding catastrophic climate change: Heterogeneous abatement costs and voting on redistribution in a threshold public good experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    19. Masaki Aoyagi & Naoko Nishimura & Yoshitaka Okano, 2017. "Efficiency and Voluntary Redistribution under Inequality," ISER Discussion Paper 0992, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka.
    20. Rustam Romaniuc & Dimitri Dubois & Gregory J. DeAngelo & Bryan C. McCannon, 2016. "Intergroup Solidarity and Local Public Goods Provision : An Experiment," Working Papers 16-11, LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    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:hal:journl:hal-00736243. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.