Economic status and acknowledgement of earned entitlement

Barr, Abigail; Burns, Justine; Miller, Luis; Shaw, Ingrid

Abstract

We present a series of experiments that investigates whether tendencies to acknowledge entitlement owing to effort and productivity are associated with within society economic status. Each participant played a four-person dictator game under one of two treatments, under one initial endowments were earned, under the other they were randomly assigned. The experiments were conducted in the United Kingdom, and South Africa. In both locations we found that relatively well-off individuals make allocations to others that reflect those others’ initial endowments more when those endowments were earned rather than random; among relatively poor individuals this was not the case.

Citation

Barr, A., Burns, J., Miller, L., & Shaw, I. (2015). Economic status and acknowledgement of earned entitlement. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 118, 55-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2015.02.012

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 16, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Feb 23, 2015
• Publication Date: 2015-10
• Deposit Date: Apr 20, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 20, 2015
• Journal: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
• Print ISSN: 0167-2681
• Electronic ISSN: 0167-2681
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 118
• Pages: 55-68
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2015.02.012
• Keywords: Distributive Justice, Inequality, Laboratory Experiments
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/744541
• Publisher URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115000475
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Economic status and acknowledgement of earned entitlement; Journal Title: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2015.02.012; Content Type: article; Copyright: Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.