The effect of initial inequality on meritocracy: A voting experiment on tax redistribution

Natalia Jiménez (), Elena Molis and Ángel Solano-García
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Angel Solano Garcia ()

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, vol. 175, issue C, 380-394

Abstract: According to Alesina and Angeletos (2005), societies are less redistributive but more efficient when the median voter believes that effort and talent are much more important than luck in determining income. We test these results through a lab experiment in which participants vote over the tax rate and their pre-tax income is determined according to their performance in a real-effort task with leisure time. Subjects receive either a high or a low wage and this condition is either obtained through their talent in a tournament or randomly assigned. We compare subjects' decisions in these two different scenarios, taking into consideration different levels of wage inequality. In our framework, this initial income inequality turns out to be crucial to support the theoretical hypothesis of Alesina and Angeletos (2005). Overall, we find that, only if the wage inequality is high, subjects choose a lower level of income redistribution and provide a higher effort level in the scenario in which high-wage subjects are selected based on their talent through a tournament (than when it is randomly assigned). Thus, we confirm almost all theoretical results in Alesina and Angeletos (2005) when the wage inequality is high enough. The big exception is for efficiency (measured as the sum of total payoffs), since theoretical results are not significant for both wage inequality scenarios.

Keywords: Income redistribution; Voting; Taxation; Real-effort task; Leisure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D72 H30 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Initial Inequality on Meritocracy: a Voting Experiment on Tax Redistribution (2018)
Working Paper: The Effect of Initial Inequality on Meritocracy. A Voting Experiment on Tax Redistribution
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:175:y:2020:i:c:p:380-394

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.09.019

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