Fairness and support for redistribution: The role of preferences and beliefs

Sören Harrs and Maj-Britt Sterba

No 47, Working Papers from University of Konstanz, Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality. Perceptions, Participation and Policies"

Abstract: This paper establishes three novel findings on fairness and redistribution by combining theory-driven experimental games with large-scale surveys in the U.S. and five European countries. First, individuals revealing egalitarian, libertarian, or meritocratic fairness preferences in experimental games show large differences in support for tax and transfer policies. Second, beliefs in merit strongly predict policy support among meritocrats, but are less predictive among non-meritocrats. Third, fairness concerns matter across income groups and political camps. Our findings challenge the assumptions that meritocratic preferences are homogeneous, that fairness is a luxury good, and that fairness is mainly a moral foundation of left voters.

Keywords: Fairness; Redistribution; Political Ideology; Moral Foundations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 H24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/323221/1/1931614067.pdf (application/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:zbw:cexwps:323221

DOI: 10.48787/kops/352-2-1795hqrpstdtx1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Konstanz, Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality. Perceptions, Participation and Policies"
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().