Cross-cultural equity evaluations: A questionnaire-experimental approach

How context matters: A survey based experiment on distributive justice

“…Sen (1992) de…nes the set of welfarist theories as those theories that take utilities as the only relevant personal features and di¤er between them in the choice of combining characteristics. The insu¢ ciency of the welfarist framework to capture the complexity of the distribution problem was already the main conclusion reached by Yaari and Bar-Hillel (1984) and several subsequent questionnaire-studies abandoned the welfarist perspective in their analysis (see Schokkaert and Overlaet, 1989;Gaertner, 1994;Gaertner, Jungeilges, and Neck, 2001;Gaertner and Jungeilges, 2002;Schokkaert and Devooght, 2003;Gaertner and Schwettmann, 2005, among others). Further, there exists by now a large literature in social choice about how to incorporate ideas of responsibility in the social evaluations (for an overview see Fleurbaey and Maniquet, forthcoming).…”

“…One of the …rst examples of studies in this direction is that of Yaari and Bar-Hillel (1984), who analysed how judgements are a¤ected by context when it speci…es whether individuals need the goods to be distributed or they simply like them. There exists by now a large economic literature on this topic (see Schokkaert and Overlaet, 1989;Gaertner, 1994;Gaertner, Jungeilges, and Neck, 2001;Gaertner and Jungeilges, 2002;Schokkaert and Devooght, 2003;Gaertner and Schwettmann, 2005, among others) as well as a lot of evidence from the psychological and sociological literature (for an overview see Konow 2003).…”

State dependence in sequential equity judgements

“…In a third experiment, reported by Gaertner (1994), the results are again mixed and difficult to understand as the outcome of one of the pure principles set out in the literature. Gaertner et al (2001) summarize the findings in the line of research to which the present paper belongs. They conclude that whether people base their welfare assessments on the Rawlsian difference principle is both context-dependent and dependent on the political and cultural environment.…”

Seniority: A Blessing or A Curse? The Effect of Economics Training on the Perception of Distributive Justice

“…In addition, several scholars have been studied on the implementation of VOI in the laboratory (see, e.g., Beckman et al 2002;Carlsson et al 2003;Johannesson and Gerdtham 1995;Johansson-Stenman et al 2002;Traub et al 2009;Traub et al 2005). It is not only experimental studies that have contributed to our knowledge about distributive justice; but also survey/questionnaire studies yield this phenomenon (see, e.g., Amiel et al 2009;Bernasconi 2002;Bosmans and Schokkaert 2004;Faravelli 2007;Gaertner 1994;Gaertner and Jungeilges 2002;Gaertner et al 2001;Gaertner and Schokkaert 2011;Jungeilges and Theisen 2011).…”

“…Other scholars (see, e.g., Fleurbaey 1998;Fleurbaey and Maniquet 2011;Gaertner and Schwettmann 2007;Schokkaert and Capeau 1991;Schokkaert and Devooght 2003;Schokkaert and Overlaet 1989) focused on the issues related to the analysis of attributions concerning responsibility. In addition to problems at the stake and environmental factors, some other empirical studies (see, e.g., Gaertner and Jungeilges 2002;Gaertner et al 2001;Jungeilges and Theisen 2008) explored the dependence of the distributional issues on the personal characteristics, cultural background, experience, etc.…”