Measuring Tastes for Equity and Aggregate Wealth Behind the Veil of Ignorance
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SeriesBrown Bag Seminars General Economics
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SpeakerYan Xu (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
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FieldBehavioral Economics
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LocationErasmus University, Polak Building, Room 3-09
Rotterdam -
Date and time
September 25, 2019
12:00 - 13:00
Abstract: We propose an instrument to measure individuals’
social preferences regarding equity and efficiency behind a veil of ignorance.
We pair portfolio and wealth distribution choice problems which have a common
budget set. For a given bundle, the distribution over an individual’s wealth is
the same for both problems. The portfolio choice serves as a benchmark to
evaluate whether the wealth distribution choice exhibits equity or efficiency
preferring tastes. We report experiments using a within-subject design testing
the veracity of this instrument. We find clusters of equity preferring,
efficiency preferring, and socially agnostic individuals through reduced form,
revealed preference, and structural estimation analyses.
Paper: https://yanxu.me/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Risk_and_VoI.pdf