Promoting Competition or Helping Less-Endowed? An Experiment on Collective Institutional Choices Under Intra-Group Inequality

摘要: Unequally distributed resources are ubiquitous. The decision of whether to promote competition or equality is often debated in societies and organizations. With heterogeneous endowments, we let subjects collectively choose between a public good that most benefits the less endowed, lottery contest which only one individual group receives prize. Unlike standard theoretical predictions, majority subjects, including substantial number who believe their expected payoffs better contest, vote for good. Our data suggests people’s collective institutional choices may be driven by inequality-averse concerns. It also select option depends on voting rules.