Suspicious success - Cheating, inequality acceptance, and political preferences

Felix Klimm

Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: Supporters of left-wing parties typically place more emphasis on redistributive policies than right-wing voters. I investigate whether this difference in tolerating inequality is affected by suspicious success-achievements that may arise from cheating. Using a laboratory experiment, I exogenously vary cheating opportunities for stakeholders who work on a real effort task and earn money according to their self-reported performances. An impartial spectator is able to redistribute the earnings between the stakeholders, although it is not possible to detect cheating. I find that the opportunity to cheat leads to different views on whether to accept inequality. Left-wing spectators substantially reduce inequality when cheating is possible, while the treatment has no significant effect on choices of right-wing spectators. Since neither differences in beliefs nor differences in norms about cheating can explain this finding, it seems to be driven by a difference in redistributive preferences. These results suggest that views on redistribution will diverge even more once public awareness increases that inequality may be to a certain extent created by cheating. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published in European Economic Review 117(2019): pp. 36-55

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenar:78232

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