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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title The Role of Equality and Efficiency in Social Preferences
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Ernst Fehr
  • Michael Naef
  • Klaus M Schmidt
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Institute for Empirical Research in Economics
Number No. 300
ISSN 1424-0459
Date 2006
Abstract Text Engelmann and Strobel (AER 2004) question the relevance of inequity aversionnin simple dictator game experiments claiming that a combination of a preference fornefficiency and a Rawlsian motive for helping the least well-off is more important thanninequity aversion. We show that these results are partly based on a strong subject poolneffect. The participants of the E&S experiments were undergraduate students of economicsnand business administration who self-selected into their field of study (economics) andnlearned in the first semester that efficiency is desirable. We show that for non-economistsnthe preference for efficiency is much less pronounced. We also find a non-negligiblengender effect indicating that women are more egalitarian than men. However, perhapsnsurprisingly, the dominance of equality over efficiency is unrelated to political attitudes.
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