FREEDOM COUNTS: CROSS-COUNTRY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

João V. Ferreira (), Nobuyuki Hanaki, Fabrice Le Lec, Erik Schokkaert and Benoît Tarroux ()
Additional contact information
João V. Ferreira: University of Southampton
Benoît Tarroux: Univ Lyon, Université Lyon 2, GATE UMR 5824

No 2317, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: This paper investigates how people evaluate different sets of opportunities in terms of welfare and freedom of choice. To do this, we run a new survey-based study with 4,902 participants across 10 different countries, in which subjects face a series of theoretically-relevant binary comparisons of opportunity sets. Our analysis proceeds in two stages. We first use a naive Bayesian method to classify subjects according to the theoretical rules they implicitly employ to compare sets in terms of freedom and welfare. Then, we investigate whether subjects value freedom of choice even if more freedom does not lead to the choice of a better alternative (in- trinsic value of freedom of choice). Our main result is that an overwhelming majority of subjects reveal attaching intrinsic value to freedom. We also find that a large ma- jority of subjects use size-based rules to rank sets in terms of freedom, while there is considerable heterogeneity in the theoretical rules they employ to rank sets in terms of welfare. These results are strikingly robust across countries. All this suggests that it is important to offer choice to individuals in the design of organizations and public policies, even if this does not substantially change their choice behavior.

Keywords: Freedom of choice; Welfare; Intrinsic value; Opportunity set; Cross-cultural survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 D63 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Freedom counts: Cross-country empirical evidence (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gat:wpaper:2317

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