Equity Concerns are Narrowly Framed / Christine L. Exley, Judd B. Kessler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Exley, Christine L.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Kessler, Judd B.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25326.

NBER working paper series no. w25326

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

Distributional decisions regularly involve multiple payoff components. In a series of experiments involving over 3,300 subjects and 81,000 decisions, we find that--even when payoff components can be easily aggregated--many subjects exhibit narrow equity concerns, applying fairness preferences to a single component of payoffs. This behavior leads to preference reversals; subjects make different choices depending on which payoff component is used to denominate their decision. In our simplest setting, in which the two payoff components are small and large tokens, displaying narrow equity concerns is 63%-83% as prevalent as achieving equity in total payoffs and just as prevalent as applying the well-documented norm of a 50/50-split. Subjects also exhibit narrowly equity concerns over payoffs of time and money.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2018.