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The tyranny puzzle in social preferences: an empirical investigation. (English) Zbl 1341.91030

Summary: When forming their preferences about the distribution of income, rational people may be caught between two opposite forms of “tyranny”. Giving absolute priority to the worst-off imposes a sort of tyranny on the rest of the population, but giving less than absolute priority imposes a reverse form of tyranny where the worst-off may be sacrificed for the sake of small benefits to many well-off individuals. We formally show that this intriguing dilemma is more severe than previously recognised, and we examine how people negotiate such conflicts with a questionnaire-experimental study. Our study shows that both tyrannies are rejected by a majority of the participants, which makes it problematic for them to define consistent distributive preferences on the distribution.

MSC:

91A90 Experimental studies
91B14 Social choice
91B08 Individual preferences
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