In a novel experimental design, we study how social immobility affects the choice among distributional schemes in an experimental democracy. We design a two-period experiment in which subjects first choose a distributional scheme by majority voting (“social contract”). Then subjects engage...

Social lotteries are lotteries that are played along with someone else. The experimental literature indicates that risk attitudes depend on how one's situation in the safe alternative compares to that of a peer. Evaluation of the risky alternative also depends on whether the lottery gives equal...

The steady increase in inequality over the past decades has revived a lively debate about what can be considered a fair distribution of income. Public support for the extent of redistribution typically depends on the perceived causes of income inequality, such as differences in effort, luck, or...

We conduct a laboratory experiment where third-party spectators can redistribute resources between two agents, thereby offsetting the consequences of controllable and uncontrollable luck. Some spectators go to the limits and equalize all or no inequalities, but many follow an interior allocation...

We address a basic diffculty with incorporating fairness into standard utilitarian choice theories. Standard utilitarian theories evaluate lotteries according to the (weighted) utility over ?nal outcomes and assume in particular that a lottery is never preferred over getting the most preferred...

We experimentally investigate subjects’ preferences for redistribution depending on i) their personal stake in the outcome (either absent or not), ii) the effect of luck in strengthening or weakening the income inequality as derived from merit, and iii) whether individuals are informed about...

Many personally risky decisions, such as innovation and entrepreneurship, have the potential to increase overall welfare by creating positive externalities for society. Rewarding such prosocial risk-taking may be an important strategy in addressing societal challenges like, for example, the...

We conduct laboratory experiments where third-party spectators can redistribute resources between two agents, thereby eliminating inequality and offsetting the consequences of controllable and uncontrollable luck. Some spectators go to the limits and equalize all or no inequalities, but many...

We conduct a laboratory experiment where third-party spectators can redistribute resources between two agents, thereby offsetting the consequences of controllable and uncontrollable luck. Some spectators go to the limits and equalize all or no inequalities, but many follow an interior allocation...

We refine the understanding of individual preferences across social lotteries, whereby the payoffs of a pair of subjects are exposed to random shocks. We find that aggregate behavior is ex-post and ex-ante inequality averse, but also that there is a wide variety of individual preferences and...