Efficiency-Equality Trade-off within French and German Couples A Comparative Experimental Study

Miriam Beblo, Denis Beninger, François Cochard, Hélène Couprie () and Astrid Hopfensitz

Annals of Economics and Statistics, 2015, issue 117-118, 233-252

Abstract: We present the results of an experiment measuring social preferences within couples in a context where intra-household pay-off inequality can be reduced at the cost of diminishing household income. We measure social norms regarding this efficiency-equality trade-off by reported beliefs on the behavior of peers, and we implement a cross-country comparison between France and Germany. In particular, we show that German households are more income inequality averse and thus less income-maximizing than French households. Decomposition reveals that diverging sample compositions in the two countries drive less than half of the difference, while over half of the initial French/German difference remains unexplained. Beliefs differ significantly from observed behavior in both countries. Income-maximizing choices are overestimated in the German sample and underestimated in the French.

Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:adr:anecst:y:2015:i:117-118:p:233-252

DOI: 10.15609/annaeconstat2009.117-118.233

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