Non-Meritocrats or Conformist Meritocrats? A Redistribution Experiment in China and France

Margot Belguise, Yuchen Huang and Zhexun Mo
Additional contact information
Margot Belguise: Department of Economics, Warwick University
Yuchen Huang: Paris School of Economics
Zhexun Mo: Paris School of Economics & the World Inequality Lab

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Recent empirical evidence contends that meritocratic ideals are mainly a Western phenomenon. Intriguingly, the Chinese people appear to not differentiate between merit- and luck-based inequalities, despite their rich historical legacy of meritocratic institutions. We propose that this phenomenon might be due to the Chinese public’s greater adherence towards the status quo. In order to test this hypothesis, we run an incentivized redistribution experiment with elite university students in China and France, by varying the initial split of payoffs between two real-life workers to redistribute from. We show that Chinese respondents consistently and significantly choose more non-redistribution (playing the status quo) across both highly unequal and relatively equal status quo scenarios than our French respondents. Additionally, we also show that the Chinese sample does differentiate between merit- and luck-based inequalities, and does not redistribute less than the French absent status quo conformity. Ultimately, we contend that such a phenomenon is indicative of low political agency rather than apathy, inattention, or libertarian beliefs among the Chinese. Notably, our findings show that Chinese individuals’ conformity to the status quo is particularly pronounced among those from families of working-class and farming backgrounds, while it is conspicuously absent among individuals whose families have closer ties to the private sector. JEL Codes: D31 ; D63 ; D73 ; D83 ; H23 ; H24 ; P26

Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w ... p_1476_-belguise.pdf

Related works:
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:wrk:warwec:1476

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Margaret Nash ().