An Experimental Study on Individual Choice, Social Welfare, and Social Preferences

Authors

• Seidl
• S.
• Traub
• S.
• Schmidt
• U.

Publication Date

JEL Classification

Key Words

We experimentally study subjects’ compliance with dominance relationships of income distributions in a ranking task. The experiment consisted of four different treatments: lottery, individual choice, social preferences, and social planner. Our results suggest that people’s risk attitudes do not adequately reflect their inequality attitudes. Uninvolved social planners exhibit randomization preferences, while self-interested social planners are generally more inequality averse and try to avoid extreme outcomes.

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