IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwkwp/2230.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why do preferences for redistribution differ across countries? An experimental analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Grimalda, Gianluca
  • Farina, Francesco
  • Conte, Anna
  • Schmidt, Ulrich

Abstract

We test for different theories purporting to explain cross-country differences in income redistribution through standardized experimental choices. US Americans and Italians demand less redistribution than Norwegians and Germans, regardless of whether self-interest is relevant. Those earning (or expecting to earn) below-median incomes behave as "libertarians" more frequently in the US and Italy than in Germany and Norway. Above-the-median earners behave similarly across countries. Higher overconfidence by US Americans and Italians further reduces their demand for redistribution under uncertainty. The "Prospect of Upward Mobility" hypothesis holds similarly in all countries. US Americans do not reward individual merit more than others.

Suggested Citation

  • Grimalda, Gianluca & Farina, Francesco & Conte, Anna & Schmidt, Ulrich, 2023. "Why do preferences for redistribution differ across countries? An experimental analysis," Kiel Working Papers 2230, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), revised 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2230
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/268038/1/KWP2230rev.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raj Chetty & John N Friedman & Emmanuel Saez & Nicholas Turner & Danny Yagan, 2020. "Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(3), pages 1567-1633.
    2. Alberto Alesina & Stefanie Stantcheva & Edoardo Teso, 2018. "Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 521-554, February.
    3. Horton N. J. & Lipsitz S. R., 2001. "Multiple Imputation in Practice: Comparison of Software Packages for Regression Models With Missing Variables," The American Statistician, American Statistical Association, vol. 55, pages 244-254, August.
    4. Roth, Alvin E. & Vesna Prasnikar & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara & Shmuel Zamir, 1991. "Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1068-1095, December.
    5. Geert Hofstede, 1998. "Identifying Organizational Subcultures: An Empirical Approach," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 1-12, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Sabrina Herzog & Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch & Chi Trieu & Jana Willrodt, 2023. "Who Is in Favor of Affirmative Action? Representative Evidence from an Experiment and a Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 10822, CESifo.
    2. Herzog, Sabrina & Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah & Trieu, Chi & Willrodt, Jana, 2023. "Who is in favor of affirmative action? Representative evidence from an experiment and a survey," DICE Discussion Papers 409, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cécile Bonneau & Sébastien Grobon, 2022. "Unequal access to higher education based on parental income: evidence from France ," World Inequality Lab Working Papers halshs-03693195, HAL.
    2. Juliana Londoño-Vélez, 2022. "The Impact of Diversity on Perceptions of Income Distribution and Preferences for Redistribution," NBER Working Papers 30386, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Londoño-Vélez, Juliana, 2022. "The impact of diversity on perceptions of income distribution and preferences for redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    4. Fabbri, Marco & Bigoni, Maria, 2021. "How Property Shapes Distributional Preferences," IZA Discussion Papers 14768, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Wang, Xue & Chen, Wei-Fen & Hong, Ying-Yi & Chen, Zhansheng, 2022. "Perceiving high social mobility breeds materialism: The mediating role of socioeconomic status uncertainty," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 629-638.
    6. Cécile Bonneau & Sébastien Grobon, 2022. "Parental Income and Higher Education Patterns: Evidence From France," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 22005rr, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, revised Dec 2023.
    7. Kenedi, Gustave & Sirugue, Louis, 2023. "Intergenerational income mobility in France: A comparative and geographic analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    8. Robert Jiro Netzer & Matthias Sutter, 2009. "Intercultural trust. An experiment in Austria and Japan," Working Papers 2009-05, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    9. Anne Corcos & Yorgos Rizopoulos, 2011. "Is prosocial behavior egocentric? The “invisible hand” of emotions," Post-Print halshs-01968213, HAL.
    10. Liqi Zhu & Gerd Gigerenzer & Gang Huangfu, 2013. "Psychological Traces of China's Socio-Economic Reforms in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-6, August.
    11. Martti Kaila & Emily Nix & Krista Riukula, 2021. "Disparate Impacts of Job Loss by Parental Income and Implications for Intergenerational Mobility," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 53, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    12. Gale, John & Binmore, Kenneth G. & Samuelson, Larry, 1995. "Learning to be imperfect: The ultimatum game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 56-90.
    13. Lasse J. Jessen & Sebastian Koehne & Patrick Nüß & Jens Ruhose, 2024. "Socioeconomic Inequality in Life Expectancy: Perception and Policy Demand," CESifo Working Paper Series 10940, CESifo.
    14. Finocchiaro Castro, Massimo, 2008. "Where are you from? Cultural differences in public good experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2319-2329, December.
    15. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    16. Ehmke, Mariah & Lusk, Jayson & Tyner, Wallace, 2010. "Multidimensional tests for economic behavior differences across cultures," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 37-45, January.
    17. Rodríguez Chatruc, Marisol & Rozo, Sandra, 2021. "How Does it Feel to Be Part of the Minority?: Impacts of Perspective Taking on Prosocial Behavior," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 11599, Inter-American Development Bank.
    18. Andrew E. Clark & Maria Cotofan, 2023. "Are the upwardly mobile more left-wing?," CEP Discussion Papers dp1938, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    19. Victor Ginsburgh & Shlomo Weber, 2020. "The Economics of Language," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(2), pages 348-404, June.
    20. Tim Krieger & Christine Meemann & Stefan Traub, 2022. "Inequality, Life Expectancy, and the Intragenerational Redistribution Puzzle - Some Experimental Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 9677, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income Redistribution; Inequality; Experiment; Merit; Overconfidence; Prospects of Upward Mobility; Cross-country research;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:ifwkwp:2230. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.html .

    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.