A Tale of Two Cities: An Experiment on Inequality and Preferences

Maria Bigoni, S. Bortolotti and Veronica Rattini

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: We study how differences in socio-economic background correlate with preferences and beliefs, in a sample of college students born in a mid-sized Italian city. Our findings indicate that participants living in an area characterized by a high socio-economic environment tend to trust more and are more inclined to reciprocate higher levels of trust, as compared to those coming from less wealthy neighborhoods. This behavioral difference is, at least in part, driven by heterogeneities in beliefs: subjects from the most affluent part of the city have more optimistic expectations on their counterpart's trustworthiness than those living in a lower socio-economic environment. By contrast, no significant differences emerge in other preferences: generosity, risk-attitudes, and time preferences. Finally, we do not find any systematic evidence of out-group discrimination based on neighborhood identity.

JEL-codes: C90 D31 D63 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/6132/1/WP1128.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A tale of two cities: an experiment on inequality and preferences (2022)
Working Paper: A Tale of Two Cities: An Experiment on Inequality and Preferences (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp1128

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().