A glimpse through the veil of ignorance: Equality of opportunity and support for redistribution

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Krawczyk, Michal
• 署名单位: University of Amsterdam
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.10.003
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 131-141
• 关键词: Equality of opportunity; Social mobility; voting; redistribution; American exceptionalism

摘要

This study is an experimental investigation into preference for redistribution of income it had been hypothesized that (belief in) equality of Opportunity in I society diminishes support for the welfare state This Could potentially explain the low taxes and social benefits in the United States vis-a-vis Europe To verify this hypothesis, participants in an experiment were assigned different Probabilities of Winning and matched in groups of four. Next, before finding Out who would actually win, they selected preferred transfers to be paid by the winners to the group as a whole it was found that the average transfers were about 20% lower in the sessions in which winning was determined by performance in a task rather than by sheer luck This difference cannot be explained by overconfidence in predicting own score it corroborates the conjecture that perceived determinants of success (i.e. whether poverty results from laziness or bad hick) affect the support for redistribution On the other hand. greater inequalily Of Opportunity measured simply by dispersion of Probabilities of Winning within a group did not lead to higher transfers (C) 2009 Elsevier B V All rights reserved