Disadvantageous inequalities, effort and money burning: are people willing to pay to reduce others' income when inequalities are based on individual performance or based on arbitrary decisions?

Jérémy Celse

Economics Bulletin, 2021, vol. 41, issue 3, 1719-1726

Abstract: Are people more or less willing to burn others' income if others deserve their advantage in the sense of having expended some efforts to get it? We investigated the impact of effort on burning decisions. To fulfil our research question, we conducted two experimental conditions: one in which participants received endowments randomly and another in which participants received endowments based on their performance in a real-effort task. Then participants could reduce others' income through incurring a cost. We found burning rates to be similar across conditions but participants cut a significantly larger fraction of others' income when endowments are attributed through effort rather than randomly.

Keywords: Money burning; Inequalities; Desert; Envy; Interdependent preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09-17
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