We elicit distributional fairness ideals of impartial spectators using an incentivized elicitation in a large and heterogeneous sample of the German population. We document several empirical facts: i) egalitarianism is the predominant ideal; ii) females are more egalitarian than men; iii) men...

We use a large and heterogeneous sample of the Danish population to investigate the importance of distributional preferences for behavior in a public good game and a trust game. We find robust evidence for the significant explanatory power of distributional preferences. In fact, compared to...

This paper examines how perceptions of social mobility affect distributional preferences. We conduct a randomized information intervention in a large and heterogeneous sample of Germans to manipulate beliefs about social mobility. While the information treatment renders perceptions significantly...

Are upper class individuals less ethical? Highly popularized research findings support this notion. This paper provides a novel test to evaluate the relationship between social status and ethical behavior. We successfully prime a large heterogeneous sample of the German population as either high...

We conduct a representative survey experiment in Germany to understand why people support inefficient policies. In particular, we measure beliefs about and preferences for rent control - a policy that is widely regarded as harmful by experts. To tease out causal mechanisms, we provide randomly...