IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aeq/aeqsjb/v133_y2013_i1_q1_p1-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Makes Me See Inequality as Just?

Author

Listed:
  • Bischoff, Ivo
  • Heinemann, Friedrich
  • Hennighausen, Tanja

Abstract

Economists should be interested in understanding the factors behind the fairness assessment of inequality since this codetermines individuals' willingness to cooperate and to exert positive reciprocity as a tax payer and citizen. So far, this topic has been largely neglected in the economic literature. This contribution wants to shed light on the factors behind the individual assessment of inequality: Why do some individuals consider the inequality in their country as just while others do not? Our empirical analysis based on survey data for Germany shows that very different forces shape the individual fairness assessment: distributive preferences, beliefs on the sources of inequality, satisfaction with democracy and several socio-economic characteristics. Given that the welfare and tax state depends on the voluntary cooperation of citizens, our insights are relevant for many political and economic contexts, such as tax compliance or welfare benefit cheating.

Suggested Citation

  • Bischoff, Ivo & Heinemann, Friedrich & Hennighausen, Tanja, 2013. "What Makes Me See Inequality as Just?," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 133(1), pages 1-21.
  • Handle: RePEc:aeq:aeqsjb:v133_y2013_i1_q1_p1-21
    DOI: 10.3790/schm.133.1.1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3790/schm.133.1.1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers (2008 onwards); Pay-per-view access from http://www.genios.de (2000 onwards with 2 years moving wall) and http://ejournals.duncker-humblot.de/loi/schm (2008 onwards)

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3790/schm.133.1.1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ivo Bischoff & Nataliya Kusa, 2019. "Should Wealth Transfers Be Taxed? Evidence from a Representative German Survey," Public Finance Review, , vol. 47(4), pages 635-661, July.
    2. Blesse, Sebastian & Heinemann, Friedrich, 2020. "Citizens’ trade-offs in state merger decisions: Evidence from a randomized survey experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 438-471.
    3. Ivo Bischoff & Nataliya Kusa, 2015. "Policy preferences for inheritance taxation," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201531, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    4. Ivo Bischoff & Nataliya Kusa, 2016. "Should wealth transfers be taxed? Citizens’ view on a fundamental question," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201636, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    5. Ivo Bischoff & Thomas Krauskopf, 2013. "Motives of pro-social behavior in individual versus collective decisions – a comparative experimental study," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201319, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • C42 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Survey Methods
    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aeq:aeqsjb:v133_y2013_i1_q1_p1-21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gabriele Freudenmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.duncker-humblot.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.