 Redistribution and group participation: experimental evidence from Africa and the UKMarcel Fafchamps and Ruth Hill No 8330, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank Abstract: This paper investigates whether the prospect of redistribution hinders the formation of efficiency-enhancing groups. An experiment is conducted in a Kenyan slum, Ugandan villages, and a UK university town and used to test, in an anonymous setting with no feedback, whether subjects join a group that increases their endowment but exposes them to one of three redistributive actions: stealing, giving, or burning. Exposure to redistributive options among group members operates as a disincentive to join a group. This finding obtains under all three treatments -- including when the pressure to redistribute is intrinsic. However, the nature of the redistribution affects the magnitude of the impact. Giving has the least impact on the decision to join a group, whilst forced redistribution through stealing or burning acts as a much larger deterrent to group membership. These findings are common across all three subject pools, but African subjects are particularly reluctant to join a group in the burning treatment, indicating strong reluctance to expose themselves to destruction by others. Date: 2018-02-05 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8330 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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