A Little Fairness May Induce a Lot of Redistribution in Democracy

Tyran, Jean‐Robert; Sausgruber, Rupert

doi:10.2139/ssrn.371984

Cited by 79 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Prominent views argue that redistribution is driven by concerns over fairness (64)(65)(66). Issues of fairness have a long evolutionary history (67) and therefore potentially shape attitudes about modern redistribution.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Support for redistribution is shaped by compassion, envy, and self-interest, but not a taste for fairness

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Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Why do people support economic redistribution? Hypotheses include inequity aversion, a moral sense that inequality is intrinsically unfair, and cultural explanations such as exposure to and assimilation of culturally transmitted ideologies. However, humans have been interacting with worse-off and better-off individuals over evolutionary time, and our motivational systems may have been naturally selected to navigate the opportunities and challenges posed by such recurrent interactions. We hypothesize that modern redistribution is perceived as an ancestral scene involving three notional players: the needy other, the better-off other, and the actor herself. We explore how three motivational systems-compassion, self-interest, and envy-guide responses to the needy other and the better-off other, and how they pattern responses to redistribution. Data from the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Israel support this model. Endorsement of redistribution is independently predicted by dispositional compassion, dispositional envy, and the expectation of personal gain from redistribution. By contrast, a taste for fairness, in the sense of (i) universality in the application of laws and standards, or (ii) low variance in group-level payoffs, fails to predict attitudes about redistribution.[M]ore recently the "Greatest happiness principle" has been brought prominently forward. It is, however, more correct to speak of the latter principle as the standard, and not as the motive of conduct.-Charles Darwin (1) W hy do people support social policies? One level of explanation addresses properties of populations that individual minds might process-local practices, shared beliefs and ideologies, collective identities, and recent history (2). A second, independent level of explanation asks which specific psychological mechanisms participate in forming the individual's response to a policy-that is, what interpretive, emotional, and motivational systems are activated by external inputs, shaping the response (3, 4). Here, we explore this second level of explanation. We investigate several evolved psychological mechanisms to see to what degree they pattern the individual's response to economic redistribution. We also investigate the extent to which a taste for fairness shapes support for redistribution.By economic redistribution, we mean the modification of a distribution of resources across a population as the result of a political process. In the case of progressive redistribution (henceforth, redistribution)-a policy for which there is large worldwide demand (5, 6)-the ostensible group-level goal is to even out a skewed statistical distribution by transferring resources from the better off to the less well off. However, it is possible that the public rationale for supporting a policy is distinct from the private or even nonconscious motives of individuals supporting (or opposing) it. It is important to recognize that such a transformation in the distribution of resources does not necessarily entail conservation of a fixed and ...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Support for redistribution is shaped by compassion, envy, and self-interest, but not a taste for fairness

Sznycer

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Sell

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Thus, Tyran and Sausgruber (2006) show that, in a one shot game, the unique equilibrium with social preferences à la Fehr and Schmidt (1999) predicts voting patterns by rich and poor better than the unique selfinterested Nash equilibrium. Sutter (2002) finds that players show solidarity between them, voting against a public good which would increase total surplus but may harm some players, a behavior which is contradictory with the unique Nash-equilibrium prediction.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 92%

It is Hobbes, not Rousseau: an experiment on voting and redistribution

2011

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We perform an experiment which provides a laboratory replica of some important features of the welfare state. In the experiment, all individuals in a group decide whether to make a costly effort, which produces a random (independent) outcome for each one of them. The group members then vote on whether to redistribute the resulting and commonly known total sum of earnings equally amongst themselves. This game has two equilibria, if played once. In one of them, all players make effort and there is little redistribution. In the other one, there is no effort and nothing to redistribute. A solution to the repeated game allows for redistribution and high effort, sustained by the threat to revert to the worst of these equilibria. Our results show that redistribution with high effort is not sustainable. The main reason for the absence of redistribution is that rich agents do not act differently depending on whether the poor have worked hard or not. The equilibrium in which redistribution may be sustained by the threat of punishing the poor if they do not exert effort is not observed in the experiment. Thus, the explanation of the behavior of the subjects lies in Hobbes, not in Rousseau.

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“…The asymmetry in redistribution outcomes prevails in the example above because with a narrow rich majority, the most inequality-averse rich voter drives the outcome (panel 3) but with a narrow poor majority, the least inequality-averse poor voter drives the outcome (panel 4). Thus, a little inequality aversion goes a long a way in RMV (this is the intuition discussed in Tyran and Sausgruber 2006), but is irrelevant in PMV. Table 1 illustrates how the asymmetry affect depends on the size of the electorate and the relative size of the two income classes in a simple simulation exercise.…”

Section: Properties Of the Asymmetry Effectmentioning

confidence: 95%

Inequality Aversion and Voting on Redistribution

2011

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Some people have a concern for a fair distribution of incomes while others do not. Does such a concern matter for majority voting on redistribution? Fairness preferences are relevant for redistribution outcomes only if fair-minded voters are pivotal. Pivotality, in turn, depends on the structure of income classes. We experimentally study voting on redistribution between two income classes and show that the effect of inequality aversion is asymmetric. Inequality aversion is more likely to matter if the "rich" are in majority. With a "poor" majority, we find that redistribution outcomes look as if all voters were exclusively motivated by self-interest. JEL: A13, C9, D72

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A Little Fairness May Induce a Lot of Redistribution in Democracy

Cited by 79 publications

References 43 publications

Support for redistribution is shaped by compassion, envy, and self-interest, but not a taste for fairness

Support for redistribution is shaped by compassion, envy, and self-interest, but not a taste for fairness

It is Hobbes, not Rousseau: an experiment on voting and redistribution

Inequality Aversion and Voting on Redistribution

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