Arbeitspapier
The anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity
This paper dissects distributional preferences with group identity in a modified dictator game. I estimate individual-level utility functions with two parameters that govern the trade-offs between equity and efficiency and giving to self and to other. Subjects put on average less weight on income of the out-group, but overall only a minority behaves completely selfishly. Giving to the out-group also renders subjects more accepting of inequality. However, the experiment also uncovers a large heterogeneity of preferences. It seems that those who are social become slightly less social in the presence of the out-group. The number of selfish individuals is instead hardly affected. Moreover, choices in both treatments overwhelmingly stem from well-behaved, yet systematically different underlying social preference functionals. Hence this experiment suggests that the rational choice approach, which is predominantly used in the literature, is a useful tool to understand the effect of group identity on social preferences. As a side result, I find that the weight on self, but not the individual equity-efficiency trade-off predicts political left-right self-assessment as more conservative voters are more selfish. I also document gender differences: females put less weight on self, are more inequality averse and react more strongly to the treatment.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: Working Papers in Economics and Statistics ; No. 2017-02
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Distribution: General
Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: General
- Subject
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social identity
GARP
distributional preferences
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Muller, Daniel
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
- (where)
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Innsbruck
- (when)
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2017
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Muller, Daniel
- University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
Time of origin
- 2017