Preferences for Redistribution and Pensions: What Can We Learn from Experiments?

Franziska Tausch (), Jan Potters and Arno Riedl

No 5090, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Redistribution is an inevitable feature of collective pension schemes and economic experiments have revealed that most people have a preference for redistribution that is not merely inspired by self-interest. Interestingly, little is known on how these preferences interact with preferences for different pension schemes. In this paper we review the experimental evidence on preferences for redistribution and suggest some links to redistribution through pensions. For that purpose we distinguish between three types of situations. The first deals with distributional preferences behind a veil of ignorance. In the second type of situation, individuals make choices in front of the veil of ignorance and know their position. Finally, we discuss situations in which income is determined by interdependent rather than individual choices. In the closing parts of the paper we discuss whether and how these experimental results speak to the redistribution issues of pensions. For example, do they argue for or against mandatory participation? Should we have less redistribution and more actuarial fairness? How does this depend on the type of redistribution involved?

Keywords: insurance; pension; fairness; redistribution; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D01 D03 D63 D64 H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-ias, nep-ltv and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp5090.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Preferences for redistribution and pensions. What can we learn from experiments? (2013)
Working Paper: Preferences for redistribution and pensions: what can we learn from experiments? (2011)
Working Paper: Preferences for Redistribution and Pensions. What can we Learn from Experiments? (2010)
Working Paper: Preferences for redistribution and pensions: what can we learn from experiments? (2010)
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:iza:izadps:dp5090

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().