Misperceiving Economic Success: Experimental Evidence on Meritocratic Beliefs and Inequality Acceptance

Arbeitspapier

Meritocratic beliefs are often invoked as justification of inequality. We provide evidence on how meritocratic beliefs are shaped by economic status and how they contribute to the moral justification of inequality. In a large-scale survey experiment in the US, we show that success causes a change in beliefs about success depending on effort rather than luck. Exploiting exogenous variation in meritocratic beliefs in a two-stage analysis shows that beliefs affect how much inequality people accept. Successful people prefer to remain ignorant about the true underlying reasons for success and there is no evidence that beliefs are moderated by political orientation.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 9983

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement ; Field Experiments ; Taxation and Subsidies: Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies ; Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies; includes inheritance and gift taxes
• Thema: meritocratic beliefs ; inequality acceptance ; fairness ; political views ; survey experiment

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Fehr, Dietmar ; Vollmann, Martin
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (wo): Munich
• (wann): 2022

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/266018
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ