In Becker et al. (2013a,b), we proposed a theory to explain giving behaviour in dictator experiments by a combination of selfishness and a notion of justice. The theory was tested using dictator, social planner, and veil of ignorance experiments. Here we analyse gender differences in preferences...

At least half of all employees in Germany described their wages in all three survey years under consideration here - 2005, 2007, and 2009 - as just. Still, major changes occurred over this period in how people perceived their earnings. Data from the Socio- Economic Panel (SOEP) Study show that...

Seit einiger Zeit mehren sich die Stimmen, die für Deutschland eine "soziale Schieflage" konstatieren und im Namen sozialer Gerechtigkeit Korrekturen fordern. So haben die Reallöhne in den vergangenen Jahren stagniert, teilweise sind sie sogar zurückgegangen. Zugleich kann eine Zunahme von...

Gut die Hälfte der Beschäftigten in Deutschland bewertet ihr Einkommen zu allen hier betrachteten Befragungszeitpunkten - 2005, 2007 und 2009 - als gerechte Entlohnung. Bei der Beurteilung des eigenen Einkommens lassen sich aber auch deutliche Veränderungen beobachten. Die Daten des...

This paper analyses one of Turgot's first economic essays, Plan d'un ouvrage sur le commerce, la circulation et l'intérêt de l'argent, la richesse des états (1753-4). Written prior to the appearance of physiocratic influence, it is Turgot's contribution to the movement of writing that bubbled...

Schumpeter's and Hayek's view of market coordination as being not about efficiency, but about endogenous change and never-ending discovery has been increasingly recognized even by the mainstream of economics. Underlying this view is the notion of creative learning agents who bring about novelty....

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...

We provide experimental evidence of self-serving fairness ideals in a dictator game design that includes treatments where funds can be transferred in two ways to the one player and in one way to the other. Two methods for transferring funds to the recipient produce the same results as the...

Discounted utilitarianism treats generations unequally and leads to seemingly unappealing consequences in some models of economic growth. Instead, this paper presents and applies sustainable discounted utilitarianism (SDU). SDU respects the interests of future generations and resolves...

In this paper, we first model the dynamics of an economy, making use of a simple, almost trivial circular flow analysis. Then, we demonstrate the effects of keeping up with the Jonesesʺ as well as of keeping ahead of the Smithsʺ in private consumption and the role of innovation and imitation...