We explore distributive justice and perception of fairness using survey data from freshmen and senior students of economics and sociology. We analyse the impact of context and education on their preferences over a hypothetical distribution of resources between individuals which presents a trade o¤ between e¢ ciency and equality. With context giving minimal information, economics students are less likely to favour equality; studying economics in ‡uences the preferences of the subjects, increasing this di¤erence. However, when the same problem is inserted into a meaningful context, the di¤erence disappears. Four distribution mechanisms are analysed: egalitarianism, maximin, utilitarianism and utilitarianism with a ‡oor constraint.

This article investigates fund-raising mechanisms based on a prize as a way to overcome free riding in the private provision of public goods. We focus on an environment characterised by income heterogeneity and incomplete information about income levels. Our analysis compares experimentally the performance of a lottery, an all-pay auction and a benchmark voluntary contribution mechanism. We find that prize-based mechanisms perform better than voluntary contribution in terms of public good provision. Contrary to the theoretical predictions, contributions are significantly higher in the lottery than in the all-pay auction, both overall and by individual income types.

A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t HighlightsWe examine the relationship between dishonesty and selection into competition. Do honest or dishonest people enter competitive schemes more often?Competition increases dishonesty when participants are randomly assigned to schemes.With selection, those who are more dishonest select competition more often. *Highlights (for review)Page 2 of 55 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 AbstractWe conduct a real effort experiment in which performance is not monitored and participants are paid according to their reported performance. Participants are paid according to a piece rate and a winner-take-all tournament and then select between the two schemes before performing the task one more time. Competition increases dishonesty and lowers output when the payment scheme is exogenously determined. Participants with a higher propensity to be dishonest are more likely to select into competition. However after selection, we find no output difference between piece rate and tournament. This is attributable to a handful of honest individuals who select competition.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed an enormous burden on health systems, and guidelines have been developed to help healthcare practitioners when resource shortage imposes the choice on who to treat. However, little is known on the public perception of these guidelines and the underlying moral principles. Here, we assess on a sample of 1033 American citizens’ moral views and agreement with proposed guidelines. We find substantial heterogeneity in citizens’ moral principles, often not in line with the guidelines recommendations. As the guidelines are likely to directly affect a considerable number of citizens, our results call for policy interventions to inform people on the ethical rationale behind physicians or triage committees decisions to avoid resentment and feelings of unfairness.