A core question in the contemporary debate on distributive justice is how the fair distribution of income is affected by differences in talent and effort. Important theories of distributive justice, such as strict egalitarianism, liberal egalitarianism and libertarianism, all give different answers to this question. This paper presents the results from a version of the dictator game where the distribution phase is preceded by a production phase. Each player's contribution is a result of an exogenously given talent and a chosen effort. We estimate simultaneously the prevalence of three main principles of distributive justice among the players as well as the distribution of weights they attach to fairness considerations.

Choices involving risk significantly affect the distribution of income and wealth in society, but there is probably no more contentious question of justice than how to allocate the gains and losses that inevitably result from risky choices. This paper reports the results from the first experiment, to our knowledge, to study fairness views about risk-taking, where the main aim is to examine whether people's fairness considerations mainly focus on ex ante opportunities or ex post outcomes. The experiment was a two stage dictator game where the distribution phase was preceded by a risk-taking phase. Our analysis provides four main findings. First, we show that even though many participants focus exclusively on ex ante opportunities, the majority favors some redistribution ex post. Second, we find that, among the participants who redistribute ex post, a substantial share make a distinction between ex post inequalities that reflect differences in luck and ex post inequalities that reflect differences in choices. Third, we show that the appeal of the ex ante view is independent of how costly it is to avoid exposure to risk. Fourth, we find that the choices of stakeholders and impartial spectators reflect the same set of fairness considerations.

Fairness considerations fundamentally affect human behavior, but our understanding of the nature and development of people's fairness preferences is limited. The dictator game has been the standard experimental design for studying fairness preferences, but it only captures a situation where there is broad agreement that fairness requires equal split. In real life, people often disagree on what is fair, largely because they disagree on whether individual achievements, luck, and efficiency considerations of what maximizes total benefits, can justify inequalities. We modified the dictator game to capture these elements, and studied how inequality acceptance develops in adolescence. We found as children enter adolescence, they increasingly viewed inequalities reflecting differences in individual achievements, but not luck, fair, whereas efficiency considerations mainly played a role in late adolescence.JEL code: D63It is well documented that adult humans are motivated by fairness considerations and are willing to sacrifice personal gains in order to eliminate inequalities they view as unfair (Fehr and Falk, 2002;Camerer, 2003). It is also evident from the political debate, surveys (Schokkaert and Devooght, 2003;Gaertner and Schwettmann, 2007), and economic experiments (Konow, 2000;Frohlich et al., 2004;Cappelen et al., 2007) that most adults view some inequalities as fair. In particular, most adults believe that differences in individual achievements (Konow, 2000;Cherry et al., 2002;Frohlich et al., 2004;Cappelen et al., 2007) and efficiency considerations of what maximizes total benefits (Van Lange, 1999;Andreoni and Miller, 2002;Fisman et al., 2007) may justify an unequal distribution 1 of income, but disagree on whether inequalities reflecting luck are fair (Cappelen et al., 2010(Cappelen et al., , 2007.To illustrate how efficiency and individual achievements may justify an unequal distribution of resources, consider two children, Anne and Carla, who discuss how to divide a cake. Anne appeals to efficiency when she argues that total benefits are maximized by giving her the largest share because she enjoys cake the most. Carla appeals to individual achievements when she argues that she should get the largest share because her contribution to making the cake was largest. The legitimacy of these, and other, fairness considerations have been extensively discussed in the philosophical literature (Rawls, 1971;Nozick, 1974;Sen, 2009), and such considerations are important for how people make decisions in a wide range of situations (Montada, 2002). For example, in the workplace, some may find it fair that a more productive colleague has a higher wage, and, in allocating public funds, some may find it fair to pay some attention to which projects produce the greatest total benefits in the population.Disagreements over questions of fair distribution are fundamental in human life and to get a better understanding of the source of such disagreements it is important to study how fairness views develop in childhood (Moo...

The evidence presented in this article suggests that EU regional support has a significant and positive impact on the growth performance of European regions. Moreover, there are signs of a change in the impact of this support in the 1990s, indicating that the major reform of the structural funds undertaken in 1988 may have succeeded in making EU regional policy more effective. However, the results also indicate that the economic effects of such support are much stronger in more developed environments, emphasizing the importance of accompanying policies that improve the competence of the receiving environments. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.

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