Meritocratic beliefs are often invoked as justification of inequality. We provide evidence on how meritocratic beliefs are shaped by economic status and how they contribute to the moral justification of inequality. In a large-scale survey experiment in the US, we show that success causes a...

Most people tend to equate success with merit, a tendency that is particularly pronounced among conservatives. However, in practice it is exceedingly difficult to discern the relative impact of luck and effort to economic success. Based on a large-scale online study that samples the general US...

This article contributes to the literature on the impact of transitional justice measures using microfoundational evidence from experiments. We argue that there is a distributional dilemma at the heart of transitional justice programs, given that the State must allocate goods and services both...

"Si él lo necesita" (if he really needs it) was the most common argument given by the subjects who accepted the zero offer in the ultimatum game during experiments were conducted among illiterate (adult) gypsies in Vallecas, Madrid. Interestingly the acceptance of the zero offer was not a rare...

Most people tend to equate success with merit, a tendency that is particularly pronounced among conservatives. However, in practice it is exceedingly difficult to discern the relative impact of luck and effort to economic success. Based on a large-scale online study that samples the general US...

Knowledge of the factors driving people's views on redistribution in the Global South remains limited. While these societies occupy top positions in inequality rankings, redistribution levels tend to be lower. We combine survey and experimental data from Mozambique and Viet Nam to test whether...

Knowledge of the factors driving people's views on redistribution in the Global South remains limited. While these societies occupy top positions in inequality rankings, redistribution levels tend to be lower. We combine survey and experimental data from Mozambique and Viet Nam to test whether...

Meritocratic beliefs are often invoked as justification of inequality. We provide evidence on how meritocratic beliefs are shaped by economic status and how they contribute to the moral justification of inequality. In a large-scale survey experiment in the US, we show that success causes a...

On May 11, 2001, readers of the Berliner Zeitung were invited to participate in an ultimatum bargaining experiment played in the strategy vector-mode: Each participant chooses not only how much (s)he demands of the DM 1.000-pie but also which of the nine possible offers of DM 100, 200, ..., 900...

We utilize a large-scale randomized social experiment to identify how coworkers affect each other's effort as measured by work absence. The experiment altered the work absence incentives for half of all employees living in Göteborg, Sweden. Using administrative data we are able to recover the...