Self interest and justice principle

We introduce non-enforceable property rights over bargaining surplus in a dictator game with production, in which the effort of the agents is differentially rewarded. Using experimental data we elicit individual preferences over the egalitarian, the accountability and the libertarian principle and provide evidence to support the inability of these justice principles to account for the observed behavior. Although this finding is consistent with the idea of individuals interpreting justice principles differently, we show that dictators behave self-interested concerning redistribution and choose which justice principle best maximizes their own payoff. We interpret this result as the justice norm imposing a constraint on otherwise self-maximizing agents.