Myopic Meritocracy? An Experimental Survey Approach

Sammanfattning: In my master's thesis, I present a hypothetical survey experiment (n=95) examining the impact of two types of inequality on participants' fairness perceptions. The experimental design introduces a novel approach by providing impartial spectators with precise information about workers' performance in two consecutive effort-rounds and the underlying sources of inequality. Participants possess complete certainty about the determining factors of the outcome. The thesis investigates whether, on average, spectators exhibit more sensitivity towards direct sources of inequality compared to indirect sources. Drawing on a theoretical framework, a specific type of spectator, termed Myopic Meritocrat, exhibits varying distributive behavior based on the type of source affecting workers' initial payoff. Alongside this novel investigation, the data is also utilized to conceptually replicate previous experimental findings on decision-making in a distributive settings. To ensure transparency, I preregistered all hypothesis tests before collecting the data. I do not find any statistically significant findings in the predicted direction of the hypotheses.