The Role of Equality and Equity in Social Preferences

Ernst Fehr, Michael Näf and Klaus Schmidt ()

Discussion Papers in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: Engelmann and Strobel (AER 2004) question the relevance of inequity aversion in simple dictator game experiments claiming that a combination of a preference for efficiency and a Rawlsian motive for helping the least well-off is more important than inequity aversion. We show that these results are partly based on a strong subject pool effect. The participants of the E&S experiments were undergraduate students of economics and business administration who self-selected into their field of study (economics) and learned in the first semester that efficiency is desirable. We show that for non-economists the preference for efficiency is much less pronounced. We also find a non-negligible gender effect indicating that women are more egalitarian than men. However, perhaps surprisingly, the dominance of equality over efficiency is unrelated to political attitudes.

Keywords: Social Preferences; Inequity Aversion; Efficiency Preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 C91 C92 D63 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenec:725

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