Identity affecting situations and the dictator's game

With Arne Nasgowitz

Contrary to our relationship with others today, our descendants depend entirely on us. Our production and consumption decisions may change their environment, economic wellbeing, identity, and even the possibility of their existence. In that sense, our relationship with future generations is what in Philosophy is called an identity-affecting situation. How do we justify moral duties to people who do not exist yet and, even more, may never do? With an online experiment, we answer two questions to contribute to the literature in Population Ethics and bridge a relevant topic in Philosophy to methods in Experimental Economics. First, do people make different distributive choices in identity-affecting situations? For this, we replicate a recent paper by Kopec & Brunner (2022), and we build on it with a novel variation of the Dictator's game to evaluate the effect of the identity-affecting situation. Second, is people's behaviour in the lab related to moral intuitions about real cases of identity affecting situations? For this, participants answer four questions related to real cases of identity-affecting situations. We test if those answers correlate to decisions in the variations of the Dictator's Game.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation

Experiencing unfairness ​does not lead to dishonesty​ (even when others expect it).

With Joel Berge

This study examines the impact of compensation scheme outcomes on feelings of unfairness and subsequent anti-social behavior. Results from an online experiment reveal that the outcome of the compensation scheme significantly influences feelings of unfairness among affected participants. Third-party spectators also perceive those who were unlucky as being unfairly treated and are significantly more likely to bet that these unlucky participants would lie to unassuming others for profit. Surprisingly, our findings indicate that those who perceived their unlucky outcome as unfair did not lie more than others in a sender-receiver game. These results are important for organizations as they highlight how apparently impartial compensation schemes can induce feelings of unfairness based on the realized outcome, with implications for inter-organizational collaborations.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation

Fairness in Social Policies: The Dilemma Between Universalism and Targeting

With Diego Garrido-Escartin

In this study, we examine the relationship between: inequality type, inequality level, and uncertainty in how an spectator allocates a transfer resource between two individuals labeled as potential beneficiaries of a social program. Using a novel experimental design, we find that both uncertainty and the type of inequality, whether fair or unfair, influence the preference between universal and targeted reditributive policies. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis reveals that inequality aversion and aversion to false negatives also partially explain the way in which this transfer is allocated.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation