Redistribution is an inevitable feature of collective pension schemes. It is still largely an open question what people‘s preferences are regarding redistribution - both through pensions schemes as well as more generally. It would seem that economists have little to say about this question, as...

There is vast heterogeneity in the human willingness to weigh others' interests in decision making. This heterogeneity raises the question how one can parsimoniously model and characterize heterogeneity across several dimensions of social preferences while still being able to predict behavior...

We investigate how income inequality affects social welfare in a model of voluntary contributions to multiple pure public goods. Itaya, de Meza, and Myles (1997) show that the maximization of social welfare precludes income equality in a single pure public good model. In contrast, we show that...

We propose a new criterion which reflects both the concern for welfare (utility) and the concern for rights in the evaluation of economic development paths. The concern for rights is captured by a pre-ordering over combinations of thresholds (floors or ceilings on various quantitative...

This paper examines optimal redistribution in a model with high- and low-skilled individuals with heterogeneous tastes for labor. We compare the extent to which optimal policies based on different normative criteria obey the principles of compensation (for differential skills) and responsibility...

This paper explores the determinants of survival in a life-and-death situation created by an external and unpredictable shock. We are interested in seeing whether pro-social behaviour matters in such extreme situations. We therefore focus on the sinking of the RMS Titanic as a quasi-natural...

This paper reports results from a classroom dictator game comparing the effects of three different sets of standard instructions. The results show that seemingly small differences in instructions induce fundamentally different perceptions regarding entitlement. Behavior is affected accordingly,...

Are competitive mechanisms perceived as just sources of economic inequality? Perceptions of fairness violations can have severe economic consequences, as they may cause counterproductive behavior such as rule book slowdowns or quality shading. To analyze fairness perceptions associated with...

An important element for the public support of policies is their perceived justice. At the same time most policy choices have uncertain outcomes. We report the results of a first experiment investigating just allocations of resources when some recipients are exposed to uncertainty. Although,...