Individual social welfare preferences: An experimental study

Hao Hong, Jianfeng Ding and Yang Yao

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2015, vol. 57, issue C, 89-97

Abstract: This paper studies individual social welfare preferences when facing a trade-off between equality and efficiency using a modified distribution game in which subjects decide the income of two other subjects under different budgets and different “prices of equality.” We found that over half of the subjects made choices consistent with the generalized axiom of revealed preference. We then estimated individual social welfare preferences and found that the subjects had a wide range of preferences for equality and efficiency, although the majority weakly preferred efficiency over equality.

Keywords: Equality-efficiency tradeoff; Social planner; Social welfare preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:57:y:2015:i:c:p:89-97

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2015.05.002

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