Moral consequences of becoming unemployed

We test the conjecture that becoming unemployed erodes the extent to which a person acknowledges earned entitlement. We use behavioral experiments to generate incentive compatible measures of individuals’ tendencies to acknowledge earned entitlement and incorporate these experiments in a two-stage s...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Barr, Abigail, Miller, Luis, Ubeda, Paloma
Format: Article
Published: National Academy of Sciences 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32968/
_version_ 1848794530555363328
author Barr, Abigail
Miller, Luis
Ubeda, Paloma
author_facet Barr, Abigail
Miller, Luis
Ubeda, Paloma
author_sort Barr, Abigail
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description We test the conjecture that becoming unemployed erodes the extent to which a person acknowledges earned entitlement. We use behavioral experiments to generate incentive compatible measures of individuals’ tendencies to acknowledge earned entitlement and incorporate these experiments in a two-stage study. In the first stage, participants’ acknowledgement of earned entitlement was measured by engaging them in the behavioral experiments and their individual employment status and other relevant socio-economic characteristics were recorded. In the second stage, a year later, the process was repeated using the same instruments. The combination of the experimentally generated data and the longitudinal design allows us to investigate our conjecture using a difference-in-difference approach, while ruling out the pure self-interest confound. We report evidence consistent with a large, negative effect of becoming unemployed on the acknowledgement of earned entitlement.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T19:17:40Z
format Article
id nottingham-32968
institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T19:17:40Z
publishDate 2016
publisher National Academy of Sciences
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling nottingham-329682020-05-04T17:44:59Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32968/ Moral consequences of becoming unemployed Barr, Abigail Miller, Luis Ubeda, Paloma We test the conjecture that becoming unemployed erodes the extent to which a person acknowledges earned entitlement. We use behavioral experiments to generate incentive compatible measures of individuals’ tendencies to acknowledge earned entitlement and incorporate these experiments in a two-stage study. In the first stage, participants’ acknowledgement of earned entitlement was measured by engaging them in the behavioral experiments and their individual employment status and other relevant socio-economic characteristics were recorded. In the second stage, a year later, the process was repeated using the same instruments. The combination of the experimentally generated data and the longitudinal design allows us to investigate our conjecture using a difference-in-difference approach, while ruling out the pure self-interest confound. We report evidence consistent with a large, negative effect of becoming unemployed on the acknowledgement of earned entitlement. National Academy of Sciences 2016-04-26 Article PeerReviewed Barr, Abigail, Miller, Luis and Ubeda, Paloma (2016) Moral consequences of becoming unemployed. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113 (17). pp. 4676-4681. ISSN 0027-8424 Economic experiments; Longitudinal data; Distributive justice; Redistribution; Unemployment http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/04/05/1521250113.abstract doi:10.1073/pnas.1521250113 doi:10.1073/pnas.1521250113
spellingShingle Economic experiments; Longitudinal data; Distributive justice; Redistribution; Unemployment
Barr, Abigail
Miller, Luis
Ubeda, Paloma
Moral consequences of becoming unemployed
title Moral consequences of becoming unemployed
title_full Moral consequences of becoming unemployed
title_fullStr Moral consequences of becoming unemployed
title_full_unstemmed Moral consequences of becoming unemployed
title_short Moral consequences of becoming unemployed
title_sort moral consequences of becoming unemployed
topic Economic experiments; Longitudinal data; Distributive justice; Redistribution; Unemployment
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32968/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32968/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32968/