Premium
INCOME REDISTRIBUTION AND PUBLIC GOOD PROVISION: AN EXPERIMENT
Author(s) -
MAURICE JONATHAN,
ROUAIX AGATHE,
WILLINGER MARC
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
international economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.658
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1468-2354
pISSN - 0020-6598
DOI - 10.1111/iere.12024
Subject(s) - redistribution (election) , neutrality , economics , redistribution of income and wealth , demographic economics , affect (linguistics) , asymmetry , public good , public economics , psychology , microeconomics , political science , quantum mechanics , physics , communication , politics , law
We experimentally investigate the impact of income redistribution on voluntary contributions by groups of four subjects. We compare equalizing and unequalizing redistribution. Our data are consistent with the neutrality theorem: Redistribution does not affect the amount of voluntarily provided public good at the group level. However, at the individual level, subjects tend to underadjust with respect to the Nash prediction. We also observe an insignificant adjustment asymmetry between the poor and the rich: Subjects who become poorer adjust their contribution by a larger absolute amount than subjects who become richer. Finally, poor subjects tend to overcontribute significantly more than rich subjects.