Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment

Using a political-frame-free, lab-in-the-field experiment, we investigate the associations between employment status, self-reported political ideology, and preferences for redistribution. The experiment consists of a real-effort task, followed by a four-player dictator game. In one treatment, dictat...

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Main Authors: Demel, Simona, Barr, Abigail, Miller, Luis, Ubeda, Paloma
Format: Article
Published: Cambridge University Press 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51118/
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author Demel, Simona
Barr, Abigail
Miller, Luis
Ubeda, Paloma
author_facet Demel, Simona
Barr, Abigail
Miller, Luis
Ubeda, Paloma
author_sort Demel, Simona
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Using a political-frame-free, lab-in-the-field experiment, we investigate the associations between employment status, self-reported political ideology, and preferences for redistribution. The experiment consists of a real-effort task, followed by a four-player dictator game. In one treatment, dictator game initial endowments depend on participants’ performance in the real-effort task, i.e., they are earned, in the other, they are randomly determined. We find that being employed or unemployed is associated with revealed redistributive preferences, while the political ideology of the employed and unemployed is not. In contrast, the revealed redistributive preferences of students are strongly associated with their political ideologies. The employed and right-leaning students redistribute earnings less than windfalls, the unemployed and left-leaning students make no such distinction.
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spelling nottingham-511182020-05-04T19:37:11Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51118/ Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment Demel, Simona Barr, Abigail Miller, Luis Ubeda, Paloma Using a political-frame-free, lab-in-the-field experiment, we investigate the associations between employment status, self-reported political ideology, and preferences for redistribution. The experiment consists of a real-effort task, followed by a four-player dictator game. In one treatment, dictator game initial endowments depend on participants’ performance in the real-effort task, i.e., they are earned, in the other, they are randomly determined. We find that being employed or unemployed is associated with revealed redistributive preferences, while the political ideology of the employed and unemployed is not. In contrast, the revealed redistributive preferences of students are strongly associated with their political ideologies. The employed and right-leaning students redistribute earnings less than windfalls, the unemployed and left-leaning students make no such distinction. Cambridge University Press 2018-05-21 Article PeerReviewed Demel, Simona, Barr, Abigail, Miller, Luis and Ubeda, Paloma (2018) Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment. Journal of Experimental Political Science . ISSN 2052-2630 Economic status; Lab-in-the-field experiments; Left-right scale; Redistribution https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/commitment-to-political-ideology-is-a-luxury-only-students-can-afford-a-distributive-justice-experiment/7BFBD0DB67852EB6949A0D5812A66664 doi:10.1017/XPS.2018.14 doi:10.1017/XPS.2018.14
spellingShingle Economic status; Lab-in-the-field experiments; Left-right scale; Redistribution
Demel, Simona
Barr, Abigail
Miller, Luis
Ubeda, Paloma
Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment
title Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment
title_full Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment
title_fullStr Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment
title_full_unstemmed Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment
title_short Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment
title_sort commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment
topic Economic status; Lab-in-the-field experiments; Left-right scale; Redistribution
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51118/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51118/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51118/