What is fair? Experimental evidence

David Lewis Dickinson and J. Tiefenthaler

No 2000-04, Working Papers from Utah State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: There has been growing interest within the economics discipline in the role of equity concerns in the distribution of resources. This paper presents empirical evidence from a series of controlled laboratory experiments where third-party decision-makers must allocate resources between two individuals. The experimental results indicate that subjects view a wide range of different allocations as the fair distribution of resources. However, regression analysis indicates that both treatment effects and a few demographic variables explain some of this variation in fairness concepts. Most significantly, decision-makers rewarded subjects who earned their favorable positions and the gender of the decision-maker was an important predictor of the allocation chosen.

Keywords: Fairness; equity; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 C91 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hpe
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Journal Article: What Is Fair? Experimental Evidence (2002)
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