Inequality-Seeking Punishment
11 Pages Posted: 8 Aug 2009
There are 2 versions of this paper
Inequality-Seeking Punishment
Inequality-Seeking Punishment
Date Written: August 8, 2009
Abstract
Inequality aversion is a key motive for punishment, with many prominent studies suggesting people use punishment to reduce or eliminate inequality. Punishment in laboratory games, however, is nearly always designed to promote equality (e.g., rejections in standard ultimatum games) and the marginal cost of punishment is typically non-trivially positive. As a consequence, individual preferences over punishment outcomes remain largely uninformed. We here report data from a laboratory experiment using dictator games. We find that when people are treated unfairly they systematically prefer to use punishment to create advantageous inequality. Our results shed new light on human preferences over punishment outcomes, and have important implications for the design of mechanisms to deter misconduct.
Keywords: inequality aversion, punishment, dictator games, experimetnal economics
JEL Classification: C91, D63
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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