{"id":17,"date":"2008-02-11T22:40:22","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T03:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/motivation\/2008\/02\/11\/preexisting-inequality\/"},"modified":"2008-02-11T22:40:22","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T03:40:22","slug":"preexisting-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/2008\/02\/11\/preexisting-inequality\/","title":{"rendered":"Preexisting Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In every study we\u2019ve read, the stakes are presumed to be roughly identical for each subject\u2014a potential $10 payoff (or $5 fine) shapes incentives similarly for all involved.  Since the money in play is relatively insignificant, and since all subjects are typically college students, this assumption is probably a fair one.  After all, even $10 is unlikely to mean much more to a poor college student than a wealthy one, whereas $10 to the average citizen of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scotland.gov.uk\/Publications\/2005\/06\/09132146\/21474\">Malawi<\/a> is like earning an additional three weeks\u2019 salary.<\/p>\n<p>Still, when I\u2019ve tried to start thinking about applying the various findings of the studies we\u2019ve read to legal doctrines, I\u2019ve found myself struck by the problem of inequality.  The typical calculus for a driver in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/motivation\/2008\/02\/09\/voluntary-waiver-of-a-fine\/\">David\u2019s example<\/a> is likely to change based on the driver\u2019s wealth.  To the extent that the cooperation research is applied to internal policing as in Kahan\u2019s paper, I think inequality has little significance.  But if we are designing legal sanctions from the government, the effect of preexisting inequality may complicate things.<\/p>\n<p>One obvious effect of preexisting inequality on the studies: in the \u201cone-way identification with information\u201d DG, I suspect that, if the information were to suggest significant inequality of resources between dictator and recipient, the division would be affected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In every study we\u2019ve read, the stakes are presumed to be roughly identical for each subject\u2014a potential $10 payoff (or $5 fine) shapes incentives similarly for all involved. Since the money in play is relatively insignificant, and since all subjects are typically college students, this assumption is probably a fair one. After all, even $10 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1711,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1711"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/motivation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}