- A-Z
- Jena Economics Rese...
- Volume 6
- Risk, Entitlements ...
- Autor(in)
- Erschienen
- 12. November 2012
- Nummer des Discussion-Papers
-
2012-061
- Schlagwort(e)
-
Entitlements
Fairness Bias
Framed Tax Experiment
Redistribution
Risk
- Zusammenfsg.
-
Researchers frequently studied the casual relationships of other-regarding preferences by applying experimental methods in bilateral settings (e.g., dictator game and ultimatum game). We use a framed experiment on taxes to study preferences for redistribution in a multi-person setting. We find presence of heterogeneous preferences with a substantial share of tax rate choices in line with both payoff maximization and other-regarding preferences. Notably, our data is not consistent with inequality aversion but points to other forms of other-regarding preferences, as fairness and altruism. By manipulating how subjects are assigned to a given level of pre-tax income, we vary the individual entitlements. We find a difference in the willingness to redistribute income when comparing the treatment where pre-tax income is assigned by relative performance in a production task (a general knowledge quiz) to the treatment where pre-tax income is assigned by luck. We do not find any significant difference in comparison to the intermediate treatment where pre-tax income is assigned by a combination of luck and performance. The perception of a “fair” tax is different depending on whether subjects’ pre-tax income is below or above average, which is in line with a fairness bias. Finally, subjects not knowing whether their pre-tax income is below or above the average when choosing the tax rate behave as if they were more other-regarding.
- article pub. typess JER
- Research article
- article languages JER
- Englisch
- JEL-Classification for JER
- D6 - Welfare Economics; C9 - Design of Experiments
- URN
- urn:nbn:de:urmel-40d63770-580f-4a6e-abce-c4959c22875d5-00228662-18