(Bad) Luck or (Lack of) Effort?: Comparing Social Sharing Norms between US and Europe

Roman Sheremeta, Neslihan Uler and Pedro Rey-Biel

No 584, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: We compare the determinants of individual giving between two countries, Spain and the US, which differ in their redistribution policies and their beliefs over the causes of poverty. By varying the information about the determinants of income, we find that, although overall giving is similar in both countries when subjects know the actual role of luck and effort, Spanish subjects give more when they are uninformed compared to American subjects. Using elicited beliefs, we find that this is due to Spanish subjects associating poverty with bad luck and Americans believing that low performers did not work hard enough.

Keywords: laboratory experiment; individual giving; cross-cultural; beliefs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D63 D81 H50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: (Bad) Luck or (Lack of) Effort?: Comparing Social Sharing Norms between US and Europe (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:584

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