Would The Right Social Preference Model Please Stand Up!

Abstract

A number of competing social preference models have been developed inspired by the evidence from economic experiments. We test the relative performance of some of these models using an experimental design that is aimed at capturing pure distributional concerns in a multi-person setting. We find that the individuals in this study are heterogeneous and that they do not follow any single notion of fairness or inequality aversion. In addition, the results suggest that efficiency concerns are not confined to students of economics but are important to students of all disciplines.