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- 20 Jan 2012
- Working Paper Summaries
Income Inequality and Social Preferences for Redistribution and Compensation Differentials
Keywords: by William R. Kerr
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States
By: Paola Giuliano and Marco Tabellini
We study the long run effects of immigration on American political ideology. Exploiting
cross-county variation in the presence of European immigrants between 1900
and 1930, we establish a novel result: historical European immigration is associated
with stronger... View Details
Keywords: Political Ideology; Preferences For Redistribution; Cultural Transmission; Immigration; History; Values and Beliefs; Welfare; United States
Giuliano, Paola, and Marco Tabellini. "The Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-118, May 2020. (Revised July 2024. Conditionally accepted at the Journal of the European Economic Association. Available also from VOX, UCLA Anderson Review, Weekendavisen, Cato Institute, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), World Financial Review, and Newsweek.)
- September 2014
- Article
Income Inequality and Social Preferences for Redistribution and Compensation Differentials
By: William R. Kerr
In cross-sectional studies, countries with greater income inequality typically exhibit less support for government-led redistribution and greater acceptance of wage inequality (e.g., United States versus Western Europe). If individual nations evolve along this pattern,... View Details
Kerr, William R. "Income Inequality and Social Preferences for Redistribution and Compensation Differentials." Journal of Monetary Economics 66 (September 2014): 62–78.
- October 2012
- Article
The Preference for Potential
By: Zakary L. Tormala, Jayson Jia and Michael I. Norton
When people seek to impress others, they often do so by highlighting individual achievements. Despite the intuitive appeal of this strategy, we demonstrate that people often prefer potential rather than achievement when evaluating others. Indeed, compared with... View Details
Keywords: Preferences; Persuasion; Uncertainty; Risk and Uncertainty; Performance Expectations; Attitudes
Tormala, Zakary L., Jayson Jia, and Michael I. Norton. "The Preference for Potential." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103, no. 4 (October 2012): 567–583.
- July 2021
- Article
Redistribution through Markets
By: Piotr Dworczak, Scott Duke Kominers and Mohammad Akbarpour
Policymakers frequently use price regulations as a response to inequality in the markets they control. In this paper, we examine the optimal structure of such policies from the perspective of mechanism design. We study a buyer-seller market in which agents have private... View Details
Keywords: Optimal Mechanism Design; Redistribution; Inequality; Welfare Theorems; Market Design; Equality and Inequality
Dworczak, Piotr, Scott Duke Kominers, and Mohammad Akbarpour. "Redistribution through Markets." Econometrica 89, no. 4 (July 2021): 1665–1698. (Authors' names are in certified random order.)
- Article
De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution
By: Benjamin B Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl
The prominent but unproven intuition that preference heterogeneity reduces redistribution in a standard optimal tax model is shown to hold under the plausible condition that the distribution of preferences for consumption relative to leisure rises, in terms of... View Details
Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Income; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Taxation; Microeconomics; Macroeconomics
Lockwood, Benjamin B., and Matthew Weinzierl. "De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution." Journal of Public Economics 124 (April 2015): 74–80. (Also NBER Working Paper Series, No. 17784, September 2014 and Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-063, January 2012.)
- 2014
- Working Paper
De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution
By: Benjamin B Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl
The prominent but unproven intuition that preference heterogeneity reduces redistribution in a standard optimal tax model is shown to hold under the plausible condition that the distribution of preferences for consumption relative to leisure rises, in terms of... View Details
Lockwood, Benjamin B., and Matthew Weinzierl. "De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-063, January 2012. (Updated September 2014. NBER Working Paper Series, No. 17784. Published in Journal of Public Economics.)
- November 2018
- Article
Global Evidence on Economic Preferences
By: Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, Benjamin Enke, David Huffman and Uwe Sunde
This article studies the global variation in economic preferences. For this purpose, we present the Global Preference Survey (GPS), an experimentally validated survey data set of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust... View Details
Keywords: Economic Preferences; Economics; Behavior; Surveys; Analytics and Data Science; Global Range
Falk, Armin, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, Benjamin Enke, David Huffman, and Uwe Sunde. "Global Evidence on Economic Preferences." Quarterly Journal of Economics 113, no. 4 (November 2018): 1645–1692.
- 13 Jul 2012
- Working Paper Summaries
De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Theory and Evidence on Preference Heterogeneity and Redistribution
Keywords: by Benjamin Lockwood & Matthew Weinzierl
- April 2023
- Article
The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences
By: Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, David B. Huffman and Uwe Sunde
Incentivized choice experiments are a key approach to measuring preferences in economics but are also costly. Survey measures are a low-cost alternative but can suffer from additional forms of measurement error due to their hypothetical nature. This paper seeks to... View Details
Keywords: Survey Validation; Experiment; Preference Measurement; Surveys; Economics; Behavior; Measurement and Metrics
Falk, Armin, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, David B. Huffman, and Uwe Sunde. "The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences." Management Science 69, no. 4 (April 2023): 1935–1950.
- June 2024
- Article
Redistributive Allocation Mechanisms
By: Mohammad Akbarpour, Piotr Dworczak and Scott Duke Kominers
Many scarce public resources are allocated at below-market-clearing prices, and sometimes for free. Such "non-market" mechanisms sacrifice some surplus, yet they can potentially improve equity. We develop a model of mechanism design with redistributive concerns. Agents... View Details
Akbarpour, Mohammad, Piotr Dworczak, and Scott Duke Kominers. "Redistributive Allocation Mechanisms." Journal of Political Economy 132, no. 6 (June 2024): 1831–1875. (Authors' names are in certified random order.)
- 2025
- Chapter
Culture and Contemporary Political Preferences
By: Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini
This chapter reviews the literature on the relationship between culture and political preferences. We distinguish conceptually between the direct cultural transmission of political ideology and the transmission of more primitive preferences and beliefs that influence... View Details
Keywords: Political Preferences; Culture; Values and Beliefs; Identity; Perspective; Government and Politics
Fouka, Vasiliki, and Marco Tabellini. "Culture and Contemporary Political Preferences." Chap. 29 in Handbook of Culture and Economic Behavior, by Benjamin Enke, Paola Giuliano, Nathan Nunn, and Leonardo Wantchekon. Handbooks in Economics. Elsevier, forthcoming.
- 2022
- Working Paper
Beliefs about Gender Differences in Social Preferences
By: Christine L Exley, Oliver P. Hauser, Molly Moore and John-Henry Pezzuto
While there is a vast (and mixed) literature on gender differences in social preferences, little is known about believed gender differences in social preferences. This paper documents robust evidence for believed gender differences in social preferences. Across a wide... View Details
Exley, Christine L., Oliver P. Hauser, Molly Moore, and John-Henry Pezzuto. "Beliefs about Gender Differences in Social Preferences." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-079, June 2022.
- 2011
- Working Paper
'Last-place Aversion': Evidence and Redistributive Implications
By: Ilyana Kuziemko, Ryan W. Buell, Taly Reich and Michael I. Norton
Why do low-income individuals often oppose redistribution? We hypothesize that an aversion to being in "last place" undercuts support for redistribution, with low-income individuals punishing those slightly below themselves to keep someone "beneath" them. In laboratory... View Details
Keywords: Wages; Surveys; Wealth and Poverty; Behavior; Income; Research; Rank and Position; Attitudes; Personal Characteristics; Economics
Kuziemko, Ilyana, Ryan W. Buell, Taly Reich, and Michael I. Norton. "'Last-place Aversion': Evidence and Redistributive Implications." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 17234, August 2011.
- August 2016
- Article
The Role of (Dis)similarity in (Mis)predicting Others' Preferences
By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Leslie K. John
Consumers readily indicate liking options that appear dissimilar—for example, enjoying both rustic lake vacations and chic city vacations or liking both scholarly documentary films and action-packed thrillers. However, when predicting other consumers’ tastes for the... View Details
Keywords: Perceived Similarity; Prediction Error; Preference Prediction; Self-other Difference; Social Inference; Cognition and Thinking; Perception; Forecasting and Prediction
Barasz, Kate, Tami Kim, and Leslie K. John. "The Role of (Dis)similarity in (Mis)predicting Others' Preferences." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 53, no. 4 (August 2016): 597–607.
- Forthcoming
- Article
Gender and Preferences for Performance Feedback
By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman and David Klinowski
Across multiple studies, we investigate whether there are gender differences in preferences for receiving performance feedback. We vary many features of the feedback context: whether the performance task is a cognitive test or a mock interview, whether the feedback is... View Details
Coffman, Katherine Baldiga, and David Klinowski. "Gender and Preferences for Performance Feedback." Management Science (forthcoming). (Pre-published online August 7, 2024.)
- August 2021
- Article
Hoping for the Worst? A Paradoxical Preference for Bad News
By: Kate Barasz and Serena Hagerty
Nine studies investigate when and why people may paradoxically prefer bad news—e.g., hoping for an objectively worse injury or a higher-risk diagnosis over explicitly better alternatives. Using a combination of field surveys and randomized experiments, the research... View Details
Keywords: Decision Avoidance; Difficult Decisions; Judgment And Decision Making; Medical Decision-making; Decision Making; Behavior
Barasz, Kate, and Serena Hagerty. "Hoping for the Worst? A Paradoxical Preference for Bad News." Journal of Consumer Research 48, no. 2 (August 2021): 270–288.
- September 2022
- Article
Health Externalities and Policy: The Role of Social Preferences
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf and Farzad Saidi
Social preferences facilitate the internalization of health externalities, for example by reducing mobility during a pandemic. We test this hypothesis using mobility data from 258 cities worldwide alongside experimentally validated measures of social preferences.... View Details
Keywords: Social Preferences; Pandemics; Mobility; Health Externalities; Mitigation Policies; Health Pandemics; Cooperation; Behavior; Policy
Alfaro, Laura, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf, and Farzad Saidi. "Health Externalities and Policy: The Role of Social Preferences." Management Science 68, no. 9 (September 2022): 6751–6761.
- 2019
- Article
Preferences for Experienced Versus Remembered Happiness
By: Cassie Mogilner and Michael I. Norton
Consider two types of happiness: one experienced on a moment-to-moment basis, the other a reflective evaluation where people feel happy looking back. Though researchers have measured and argued the merits of each, we inquired into which happiness people say they want.... View Details
Keywords: Well-being; Life Satisfaction; Experience; Retrospective; Time; Happiness; Satisfaction; Welfare; Perception
Mogilner, Cassie, and Michael I. Norton. "Preferences for Experienced Versus Remembered Happiness." Journal of Positive Psychology 14, no. 2 (2019): 244–251.
- 2025
- Working Paper
A Preference for Revision Absent Improvement
By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien and Michael I. Norton
People regularly encounter revised stimuli (e.g., revised versions of products, new editions of
books, tweaked recipes, and technological updates). In principle, a world of constant revision
should benefit people by affording them the most up-to-date offerings. In... View Details
Keywords: Product Change; Versioning; Expectancy Effects; Heuristics; Intuitive Processing; Product Marketing; Change; Perception; Consumer Behavior
Garcia-Rada, Ximena, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien, and Michael I. Norton. "A Preference for Revision Absent Improvement." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-087, February 2019. (Revised April 2025.)