The paper reports the first experimental study on people's fairness views on extreme income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consider extreme income inequality generated in winner-take-all situations as fair, independent of...

The meritocratic fairness ideal implies that inequalities in earnings are regarded as fair only when they reflect differences in performance. Consequently, implementation of the meritocratic fairness ideal requires complete information about individual performances, but in practice, such...

The paper reports the first experimental study on people's fairness views on extreme income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consider extreme income inequality generated in winner-take-all situations as fair, independent of...

It has been shown that participants in the dictator game are less willing to give money to the other participant when their choice set also includes the option to take money. We examine whether this effect is due to the choice set providing a signal about entitlements in a setting where...

This paper studies how individual behavior is affected by moral reflection in a dictator game with production, and the informational value of self-reported data on fairness. We nd that making individuals reflect on fairness before they play the dictator game has a moderate effect on the weight...

In a novel experimental design with nearly 10,000 adults and children, we study how adults in two societies characterized by very different levels of income inequality, Shanghai (China) and Norway, make real distributive choices involving children. We document a large cross-societal difference...

In many important economic settings, limited information makes it impossible for decision makers to ensure that each individual gets what he or she deserves. Decision makers are then faced with the trade-off between giving some individuals more than they deserve, false positives, and giving some...

The paper reports the first experimental study on people's fairness views on extreme income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consider extreme income inequality generated in winner-take-all situations as fair, independent of...