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Type	Working Paper
Scope	Discipline-based scholarship
Title	Social preferences: fundamental characteristics and economic consequences
Organization Unit	Department of Economics (Florian Scheuer)
Authors	Ernst Fehr Gary Charness
Language	English
Institution	University of Zurich
Series Name	Working paper series / Department of Economics
Number	432
ISSN	1664-7041
Number of Pages	83
Date	2024
Abstract Text	We review the vast literature on social preferences by assessing what is known about their fundamental properties, their distribution in the broader population, and their consequences for important economic and political behaviors. We provide, in particular, an overview of the empirical characteristics of distributional preferences and how they are affected by merit, luck, and concerns for equality of opportunity. In addition, we identify what is known about belief-dependent social preferences such as reciprocity and guilt aversion. Furthermore, we discuss and assess the empirical relevance of self image and social image concerns in prosocial behaviors. The overall evidence indicates that a large majority of individuals have some sort of social preference, while purely selfinterested subjects are a minority. We also document the converging insights from lab and field evidence on the role of social preferences for a deeper understanding of important phenomena such as the consequences of wage inequality on work morale, employees’ resistance to wage cuts, individuals’ self-selection into occupations that are more or less prone to morally problematic behaviors, as well as issues of distributive politics. However, although much has been learned in recent decades, there are still many important, unresolved, yet exciting, questions waiting to be tackled.
Related URLs	https://www.econ.uzh.ch/en/research/workingpapers.html https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/255996/
Other Identification Number	merlin-id:23643
PDF File	Download from ZORA
Export	BibTeX EP3 XML (ZORA)
Additional Information	Revised version ; Auch publiziert als URPP Equality of Opportunity Discussion Paper No. 44 (https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/255996/).