Luck, choice and responsibility - An experimental study of fairness views

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mollerstrom, Johanna; Reme, Bjorn-Atle; Sorensen, Erik O.
• 署名单位: George Mason University; Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN); Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2015.08.010
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 33-40
• 关键词: inequality; fairness; RESPONSIBILITY; Option luck; Brute luck; experiment

摘要

We conduct laboratory experiments where third-party spectators have the opportunity to redistribute resources between two agents, thereby eliminating inequality and offsetting the consequences of controllable and uncontrollable luck. Some spectators go to the limits and equalize either all or no inequalities, but many follow an interior allocation rule. These interior allocators regard an agent's choices as more important than the cause of her low income and do not always compensate bad uncontrollable luck. Instead, they condition such compensation on the agent's decision regarding controllable luck exposure, even though the two types of luck are independent. This allocation rule is previously unaccounted for by the fairness views in the literature. Moreover, its policy implications are fundamentally different in that it extends individual responsibility for choices made to also apply to areas that were not affected by these choices. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.