Are People Willing to Pay to Reduce Others’ Incomes?

Daniel Zizzo and Andrew Oswald

No 269339, Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper studies utility interdependence in the laboratory. We design an experiment where subjects can reduce (“burn”) other subjects’ money. Those who burn the money of others have to give up some of their own cash. Despite this cost, and contrary to the assumptions of economics textbooks, the majority of our subjects choose to destroy at least part of others’ money holdings. We vary experimentally the amount that subjects have to pay to reduce other people’s cash. The implied price elasticity of burning is calculated; it is mostly less than unity. There is a strong correlation between wealth, or rank, and the amounts by which subjects are burnt. In making their decisions, many burners, especially disadvantaged ones, seem to care about whether another person ‘deserves’ the money he has. Desert is not simply a matter of relative payoff.

Keywords: Financial Economics; Labor and Human Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2000-09-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/269339/files/twerp568.pdf (application/pdf)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/269339/files/twerp568.pdf?subformat=pdfa (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Are People Willing to Pay to Reduce Others'Incomes? (2001)
Working Paper: Are People Willing to Pay to Reduce Others' Incomes? (2000)
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:ags:uwarer:269339

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.269339

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search (aesearch@umn.edu).