Fairness, Risk Aversion and the Welfare State : an Experimental Investigation

• Autorzy: Michał Krawczyk
• Języki publikacji: EN

Abstrakty

EN

The experimental design proposed here assumes a "thin" veil of ignorance, which admits a glimpse of one's future: Decision makers choose their preferred level of income tax (and resulting benefits) without knowing what their actual income would be but facing different prospects. For one, this approach allows focusing on the impact of ex-ante inequality (inequality of opportunity) on the support for welfare state. Besides, "grand" (or programmatic) redistribution is a long-run phenomenon (see [Dixit and Londregan, 1996]), it is thus natural to assume that voters have only more or less accurate predictions about the income of their families over the whole period during which a policy is effective. In line with above-mentioned results from the field studies, we confirm the Luck vs. Skill hypothesis (transfer choices are higher when pure luck rather than performance in a task determines the outcomes) and find no support for the Divergent Chances Hypothesis We conclude that perception of fairness of the process determining income is an independent source of support for redistribution, not merely an epiphenomenona. More generally, we find strong impact of own prospect of winning but also of risk aversion and inequality aversion on the transfer choices. The design of the experiment is presented in Section 2, Section 3 reports the results, Section 4 contains a discussion of the results, in relation to some other experimental evidence. (fragment of text)

Słowa kluczowe

PL

Państwo opiekuńcze; Redystrybucja dochodów; Ryzyko; Podatek dochodowy

EN

Welfare state; Redistribution of income; Risk; Income tax

• Czasopismo: Ekonomia / Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Rocznik: 2008
• Numer: nr 21
• Strony: 230-244

Twórcy

autor

Michał Krawczyk

• Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision-Making (CREED) at the University of Amsterdam and the Tinbergen Institute

Bibliografia

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