When Fair Isn't Fair: Understanding Choice Reversals Involving Social Preferences

James Andreoni, Deniz Aydin, Blake Barton, B. Douglas Bernheim, Jeffrey Naecker

NBER Working Paper No. 25257
Issued in November 2018
NBER Program(s):Public Economics

In settings with uncertainty, tension exists between ex ante and ex post notions of fairness (e.g., equal opportunity versus equal outcomes). In a laboratory experiment, the most common behavioral pattern is for subjects to select the ex ante fair alternative ex ante, and switch to the ex post fair alternative ex post. One potential explanation embraces consequentialism and construes the reversals as manifestations of time inconsistency. Another abandons consequentialism, thereby avoiding the implication that revisions imply inconsistency. We test between these explanations by examining the demand for commitment, and contingent planning. The hypothesis of time-consistent non-consequentialism receives strong support.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

Supplementary materials for this paper:

• Personal website posting

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w25257