 Equality of opportunity and the acceptability of outcome inequalityRobert Sugden and Mengjie Wang European Economic Review, 2020, vol. 130, issue C Abstract: In many real-world situations, unfairness of outcomes is not directly related to fairness-related properties of individual decisions; it is an unintended consequence of procedures in which individuals interact. Attitudes to such unfairness may be revealed in emotions of anger and resentment rather than in preferences over alternative decision outcomes. We conjecture that inequality is viewed with relatively little disfavour when it results from procedures that allow individuals equal strategic opportunities. We define a concept of procedural fairness which formalises intuitions about equality of opportunity. We report a Vendetta Game experiment in which negative attitudes to inequality can be expressed in costly and counter-productive ‘taking’ of co-players’ assets. A given degree of material inequality induces more taking if the procedure that has generated it is unfair rather than fair. Surprisingly, there is excess taking by players whom procedural unfairness has benefited as well as by those it has harmed. Keywords: Equality of opportunity; Procedural fairness; Inequality; Vendetta Game (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:130:y:2020:i:c:s0014292120302270 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103597 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
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