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Fairness and limited information: Are people Bayesian meritocrats?

Author

Listed:
  • Cappelen, Alexander

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

  • Haan, Thomas de

    (University of Bergen)

  • Tungodden, Bertil

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

Abstract

Meritocracy is a prominent fairness view in many societies, but often difficult to apply because there is limited information about the source of inequality. This paper studies theoretically and empirically how limited information affects inequality acceptance. We connect the literatures on fairness and belief updating and show that irrationality in belief updating is potentially as important as differences in fairness views in explaining inequality acceptance. In many economic environments with limited information, signal-neglecting meritocrats act as egalitarians and base-rate neglecting meritocrats act as libertarians. The findings contribute to better understanding of the foundations of inequality acceptance in society.

Suggested Citation

  • Cappelen, Alexander & Haan, Thomas de & Tungodden, Bertil, 2022. "Fairness and limited information: Are people Bayesian meritocrats?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 7/2022, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2022_007
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    Cited by:

    1. Stefania Bortolotti & Felix Kölle & Ivan Soraperra & Matthias Sutter, 2025. "Social Risk, Fairness Types, and Redistribution," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 370, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    2. Preuss, Marcel & Reyes, Germán & Somerville, Jason & Wu, Joy, 2022. "Inequality of Opportunity and Income Redistribution," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264138, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Martin Brun & Xavier Ramos, 2025. "Attitudes to income inequality and redistribution," Working Papers 33, Finnish Centre of Excellence in Tax Systems Research.
    4. Wonjae Lee & Bongkyoo Yoon, 2025. "Misaligned beliefs and wealth distribution: An agent-based analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 45(2), pages 763-779.
    5. Marcel Preuss & Germ'an Reyes & Jason Somerville & Joy Wu, 2022. "Inequality of Opportunity and Income Redistribution," Papers 2209.00534, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2025.

    More about this item

    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

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