The first part of the project will complement and enrich the normative literature on inequality and fairness in economics, political science, and philosophy, by providing a comprehensive study of the empirical relevance of existing theories of justice. Second, it will provide new insights to the growing literature in behavioral economics and psychology that has studied how our moral motivation shapes distributive behavior and inequality acceptance.
It will furthermore, study the idea of personal responsibility in important economic environments that have yet not been addressed in the literature, including when there is an unlevel playing field, when there is competition and cooperation, and when others have intentionally influenced our choices. Further, the project will introduce new dimensions to the study of the moral mind, by investigating how our concern for individual freedom and how we draw the moral circle shape our ideas of fair and unfair inequalities. The study of individual freedom will also complement the vast normative literature on paternalism by providing the first set of experimental evidence on people’s
paternalistic preferences.
The second part of the research project will also contribute to several literatures. First, it will contribute to the important literature in economics and sociology on endogenous preferences, by providing unique large-scale evidence on how inequality acceptance and a concern for individual freedom vary across the world and, thus, across different institutional contexts. The study will also complement the existing influential theoretical literature in political economy that has studied multiple equilibria models where beliefs about the sources of inequality may interact with political institutions and determine the overall level of inequality in a society.
Finally, the project will contribute to the literature on moral development in children, which for a long time has been a major topic in psychology and in recent years has gained significant attention among economists.
