How fair shares compare: Experimental evidence from two cultures

Abstract

Voluntary transfers between individuals and households are common in less developed countries. These behaviors may be partially explained by social preferences. Two leading models -altruism and reciprocity -make opposing predictions about the impact of other-regarding preferences on incentives for effort in a variety of situations common in poor communities. This paper examines the willingness to reward effort in rural Kenya using an ensemble of economic experiments. I introduce a novel measure of effort based on physical production. I compare other-regarding behavior in experimental economic environments which differ only in the extent to which income depends on individual labor inputs. Though Kenyan experimental subjects are significantly more generous than members of a comparison population drawn from a university in the United States, members of the former group do not appear to reward effort at their own expense. In contrast, subjects in the U.S. sample are more selfish, on average, but appear comparatively generous when dividing money earned by other participants. Within the Kenyan subject pool, educational attainment and formal sector employment are correlated with the willingness to reward effort at one's own expense.

Needs Versus Entitlements-an International Fairness Experiment

“…The higher productivity in high‐income countries most likely reflects more experience with computers. As illustrated in Jakiela (), for other tasks that also may be used in an experimental setting, there may not be productivity differences between high‐income and low‐income countries.…”

“…The higher productivity in high-income countries most likely reflects more experience with computers. As illustrated in Jakiela (2009), for other tasks that also may be used in an experimental setting, there may not be productivity differences between high-income and low-income countries. Overall, the LI-participants gave away a statistically significantly larger share than the HI-participants (38.9% versus 32.4%, p = 0.001).…”

When Income Depends on Performance and Luck: The Effects of Culture and Information on Giving

“…Cross-cultural experiments have been used to understand giving norms across cultures when determinants of income are known (Roth et al, 1991;Anderson et al, 2000;Henrich et al, 2001;Cason et al, 2002;Guiso et al, 2006;Herrman et al, 2008;Jakiela, 2015). In addition, the US and Spain have been the focus of other cross-cultural experimental studies.…”

Cutthroat Capitalism Versus Cuddly Socialism: Are Americans More Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking than Scandinavians?

“…One strand of this literature has relied on large, non-incentivized representative surveys, including the World Value Survey, the European Social Survey, the General Social Survey, and the International Social Survey Programme (Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote, 2001;Alesina and Glaeser, 2004;Alesina and Giuliano, 2011;Aarøe and Petersen, 2014;Ashok, Kuzimko, and Washington, 2015;Corneo and Grüner, 2002;Edlund, 1999;Falk, Becker, Dohmen, Enke, Huffman, and Sunde, 2015;Fong, 2001;Kiatpongsan and Norton, 2014;Linos and West, 2003;Luttmer and Singhal, 2011;Osberg and Smeeding, 2006;Svallfors, 1997), while another strand has used incentivized lab-experiments on non-representative samples (Barrett, Bolyanatz, Crittenden, Fessler, Fitzpatrick, Gurven, Henrich, Kanovsky, Kushnick, Pisor, Scelza, Stich, von Rueden, Zhaog, and Laurence, 2016;Cappelen, Nygaard, Sørensen, and Tungodden, 2015;Farina, Grimalda, and Schmidt, 2016;Henrich, Boyd, Bowles, Camerer, Fehr, Gintis, McElreath, Alvard, Barr, Ensminger, Henrich, Hill, Gil-White, Gurven, Marlowe, Patton, and Tracer, 2005;Henrich, Ensminger, McElreath, Barr, Barrett, Bolyanatz, Cardenas, Gurven, Gwako, Henrich, Lesorogol, Marlowe, Tracer, and Ziker, 2010;Jakiela, 2015). We propose a new empirical approach for these types of studies that combines the strengths of the survey approach (large representative samples) and the lab experimental approach (incentivized choices).…”