Technological change, task complexity, and preferences for redistribution

Arbeitspapier

Technological change has fundamentally transformed the US labour market in recent decades, with high-earning jobs becoming increasingly focused on nonroutine, complex tasks. We provide a first experimental test of whether fairness perceptions and preferences for redistribution differ when top earners gain their incomes through luck, routine work, or complex work. We find that the desired tax rate on top earners is up to 5.3 percentage points lower for the complex work treatment compared to the routine work treatment. Interestingly, performance on complex tasks is also more likely to be seen as the result of inherited intelligence.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ifo Working Paper ; No. 398

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡ ; Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies; includes inheritance and gift taxes
• Subject: Top income tax ; technological change ; redistribution ; distributive preferences ; fairness

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Hope, David ; Limberg, Julian ; Weber, Nina
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/272305
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET