Intertemporal Universalism

Jeanne Hagenbach and Charlotte Saucet

No 21469, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Many economic and policy decisions require weighting the welfare of individuals living at different points in time. To examine how people approach such intertemporal trade-offs, we design an experiment in which subjects with no personal monetary stake allocate money between Strangers who differ in their participation and payment dates. This design allows us to examine intertemporal universalism, the extent to which individuals receive equal consideration regardless of their temporal location. Our results show that subjects are more generous toward Strangers who participate and/or are paid today than toward those whose participation and/or payment is delayed by 6, 12, or 24 months. In contrast, when both Strangers participate and/or are paid at different dates that all fall in the future, allocation differences largely vanish. To shed light on the mechanisms behind these results, we complement the main experiment with measures of perceived closeness to Strangers and open-ended justifications for favoritism. These complementary data suggest that temporal distance maps onto social distance: subjects feel closer to Strangers who are anchored in the present and justify favoring them by invoking their immediate needs or greater commitment.

Keywords: altruism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D64 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21469 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:cpr:ceprdp:21469

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21469

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().