The distributional preferences of Americans, 2013–2016

Raymond Fisman, Pamela Jakiela, Shachar Kariv*, Silvia Vannutelli

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the distributional preferences of Americans during 2013–2016, a period of social and economic upheaval. We decompose preferences into two qualitatively different tradeoffs—fair-mindedness versus self-interest, and equality versus efficiency—and measure both at the individual level in a large and diverse sample. Although Americans are heterogeneous in terms of both fair-mindedness and equality-efficiency orientation, we find that the individual-level preferences in 2013 are highly predictive of those in 2016. Subjects that experienced an increase in household income became more self-interested, and those who voted for Democratic presidential candidates in both 2012 and 2016 became more equality-oriented.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)727-748
Number of pages22
JournalExperimental Economics
Volume26
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2023

Funding

We are grateful to Ernst Fehr and Daniel Markovits for helpful discussions and for suggestions from the audience at the Ben-Porath Annual Lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a number of seminar participants. We thank the American Life Panel (ALP) team at the RAND Corporation for technical and administrative support. We acknowledge financial support from the Center for Equitable Growth (CEG) at the University of California, Berkeley. Any findings, opinions and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the institutions or any funding agency. The replication material for the study is available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/9EQJZE &faces-redirect=true .

Keywords

  • American life panel (ALP)
  • Distributional preferences
  • Efficiency
  • Equality
  • Experiment
  • Fairness
  • Household income
  • Impartiality
  • Political decisions
  • Rationality
  • Redistribution
  • Revealed preference
  • Social preferences
  • Voting

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The distributional preferences of Americans, 2013–2016'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this