Fair Shares and Selective Attention

Dianna R. Amasino, Davide D. Pace and Joël J. van der Weele

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2024, vol. 16, issue 4, 259-90

Abstract: Attitudes toward fairness and redistribution differ along socioeconomic lines. To understand their formation, we conduct a large-scale experiment on attention to merit and luck and the effect of attention on fairness decisions. Randomly advantaged subjects pay less attention to information about true merit and retain more economic surplus, and this effect persists in subsequent impartial decisions. Attention also has a causal role: encouraging subjects to look at merit reduces the effect of an advantaged position on allocations. This suggests that attention-based policy interventions may be effective in reducing polarized views on inequality.

JEL-codes: C91 D63 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20220275 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E196781V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20220275.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20220275.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:aejmic:v:16:y:2024:i:4:p:259-90

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/mic.20220275

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().