Related papers: Inequality of Opportunity and Income Redistributio…
Humanity has been fascinated by the pursuit of fortune since time immemorial, and many successful outcomes benefit from strokes of luck. But success is subject to complexity, uncertainty, and change - and at times becoming increasingly…
Elites disproportionately influence policymaking, yet little is known about their fairness and efficiency preferences -- key determinants of support for redistributive policies. We investigate these preferences in an incentivized lab…
We study the distributional implications of uncertainty shocks by developing a model that links macroeconomic aggregates to the US distribution of earnings and consumption. We find that: initially, the fraction of low-earning workers…
This work studies the impact of economic inequality on the evolution of intolerance through a reputation-based model of indirect reciprocity. Results show that economic inequality is a powerful enhancer of intolerance, inducing the…
The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, efforts or risk taking.…
We use a controlled laboratory experiment to study the causal impact of income decreases within a time period on redistribution decisions at the end of that period, in an environment where we keep fixed the sum of incomes over the period.…
In this paper, we explore the relationship between state-level household income inequality and macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States. Using a novel large-scale macroeconometric model, we shed light on regional disparities of…
By means of laboratory experiment I examine the relation between fairness judgments made `behind the veil of ignorance' and actual behavior in a model situation of income inequality. As the evidence shows, when material self-interest is at…
Income inequality and redistribution policies are modeled with a minimal, endogenous model of a simple foraging economy. Significant income inequalities emerge from the model for populations of equally capable individuals presented with…
The sustainability of cooperation is crucial for understanding the progress of societies. We study a repeated game in which individuals decide the share of their income to transfer to other group members. A central feature of our model is…
Strong empirical evidence from laboratory experiments, and more recently from population surveys, shows that individuals, when evaluating their situations, pay attention to whether they experience gains or losses, with losses weighing more…
This paper studies the income fluctuation problem with capital income risk (i.e., dispersion in the rate of return to wealth). Wealth returns and labor earnings are allowed to be serially correlated and mutually dependent. Rewards can be…
We present a stylized model with feedback loops for the evolution of a population's wealth over generations. Individuals have both talent and wealth: talent is a random variable distributed identically for everyone, but wealth is a random…
A common assumption in the literature is that the level of income inequality shapes individuals' beliefs about whether the income distribution is fair (``fairness views,'' for short). However, individuals do not directly observe income…
Surprisingly, there has been little research conducted about the cross-country relationship between oil dependence/abundance and income inequality. At the same time, there is some tentative evidence suggesting that oil rich nations tend to…
We study the consequences of job markets' heavy reliance on referrals. Referrals lead to more opportunities for workers to be hired, which lead to better matches and increased productivity, but also disadvantage job-seekers with few or no…
A customized internet survey experiment is conducted in Japan to examine how individuals' relative income position influences preferences for income redistribution and individual perceptions regarding income tax burden. I first asked…
When a student fails an exam, do we tend to blame their effort or the test's difficulty? Attribution, defined as how reasons are assigned to event outcomes, shapes perceptions, reinforces stereotypes, and influences decisions. Attribution…
I measure the uncertainty affecting estimates of economic inequality in the US and investigate how accounting for properly estimated standard errors can affect the results of empirical and structural macroeconomic studies. In my analysis, I…
Algorithms are increasingly used to aid, or in some cases supplant, human decision-making, particularly for decisions that hinge on predictions. As a result, two additional features in addition to prediction quality have generated interest:…