TY  - JOUR
AU  - Andreoni, James
AU  - Aydin, Deniz
AU  - Barton, Blake
AU  - Bernheim, B. Douglas
AU  - Naecker, Jeffrey
TI  - When Fair Isn't Fair: Understanding Choice Reversals Involving Social Preferences
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 25257
PY  - 2018
Y2  - November 2018
DO  - 10.3386/w25257
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w25257
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w25257.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James Andreoni
Department of Economics
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0508
Tel: 858/534-3832
Fax: 858/534-7040
E-Mail: andreoni@ucsd.edu

Deniz Aydin
Olin Business School
Washington University in St. Louis
1 Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130
E-Mail: daydin@wustl.edu

Blake Barton
Department of Economics
Stanford University
579 Serra Mall 
Stanford, CA 94305
E-Mail: blakeabarton@gmail.com

B. Douglas Bernheim
Department of Economics
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6072
Tel: 650/725-8732
Fax: 650/725-5702
E-Mail: bernheim@stanford.edu

Jeffrey Naecker
Department of Economics
Wesleyan University
E-Mail: jnaecker@gmail.com
AB  - 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 in favor of deontological (rule-based) ethics, and thereby avoids the implication that revisions imply inconsistency. We test between these explanations by examining contingent planning and the demand for commitment. While the population appears to be heterogeneous, our findings suggest that the most common attitude toward fairness involves a time-consistent preference for applying naive deontological rules.
ER  -