Consequential egalitarianism vs. accountability principle: an experimental investigation

ABSTRACT

We conducted a laboratory experiment to investigate how people’s fairness views and redistribution depend on different rooted risks, specifically whether the risk is exogenously assigned in a ‘pure-luck’ control assignment or endogenously chosen by subjects in an ‘option-luck’ treatment. This experiment examines two contradictory views about distributive justice, namely consequential egalitarianism and the accountability principle (AP). The results show widespread support for the view of AP when participants have the opportunity to alleviate the risks.

KEYWORDS:

• Fairness
• pure luck
• option luck
• accountability principle
• consequential egalitarianism

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C91
• D31
• D63

Acknowledgement

We thank Alex Brown, Catherine Eckel, Hongyu Guan and participants in ESA 2014 North America conference. All errors are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.